First published 2026
A narrator brings her adolescent daughter to Sicily after her marriage falls apart. They settle near archaeological ruins where the narrator's grandmother once worked. The mother struggles to reconstruct their lives as a pair while her own mother loses her memory back home. She cooks with her daughter, reads aloud, and plays chess as they both adjust to their new reality. The daughter begins asking hard questions and taking control of their story. Their summer becomes a search for family origins that reaches back through four generations of women. They encounter Sicily's migrants, shop owners, and elderly residents while volcanic rumblings and sudden storms shake the island. The daughter's quest pulls them deeper into mythical and geological history. As they travel together, both confront how stories create childhood memories and how families preserve or lose their past. The narrator wonders how to start over when the original beginning went wrong.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Sicily
Period: 21st-century
368 pages · Hardcover · Knopf