First published 2023
Hugh arrives in Valetto expecting to settle into the cottage where he spent childhood summers. The hilltop village in Umbria holds only ten residents now, including his relatives the Serafino widows and their hundred-year-old mother. But Elisa Tomassi has gotten there first. She claims the cottage belongs to her family, a debt owed by the Serafino patriarch Aldo, a resistance fighter her relatives sheltered during World War II. Hugh, a historian, finds himself caught between his family's version of events and Elisa's unwavering certainty. As the dispute unfolds, both families must confront what really happened during the war years when Valetto served as a refuge for fighters and civilians alike. The cottage becomes the key to unlocking decades of silence about betrayal, violence, and disappearance. Hugh and Elisa dig deeper into their shared history, discovering that the truth about Aldo Serafino and the war will reshape everything they thought they knew about their families and themselves.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Valetto, Umbria
Period: World War II
320 pages · Kindle Edition · Farrar, Straus and Giroux