Starred review from April 1, 2024
Grames (The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna) shines in this intriguing story of buried secrets in an isolated Southern Italian village. Narrator Francesca Loftfield, a 20-something American woman, arrives in the early 1960s as a charity worker. She wryly calls herself a “bluestocking with big dreams for building a better world, one needy child at a time,” and has come to Santa Chionia to establish a nursery school that would help reduce the high child mortality rates by providing nutritious meals for its pupils and educating their families about hygiene. Soon after her arrival, a flood unearths human remains from underneath the town’s post office. The skeleton was not recently buried, and most of the locals seem indifferent to the grim find. Francesca’s curiosity is stoked, though, when she’s approached by Emilia Volonta, the priest’s housekeeper, who suspects that the bones belonged to her son, Leo, who went missing after he supposedly emigrated to the U.S. as a teen, 40 years earlier. Francesca agrees to Emilia’s simple request—to determine if the town’s records include a visa for Leo. Her inquiry proves only the beginning of the matter, however. From the prologue, readers already know that Francesca will find evidence of “cold-blooded murder,” and the suspense is heightened when a second woman asks Francesca to ascertain if the remains belong instead to her missing husband. Grames excels at rendering the experiences of living as a stranger in a close-knit community, where justice is meted out extrajudicially, and she manages to keep the reader guessing as to the truth about who was murdered and why. This is a superior literary mystery. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co.
November 8, 2024
In 1960, American Francesca Loftfield works for a charity in Italy. She is sent to a remote Calabrian village where she is to create a nursery school. While she works to get a space ready, the seasonal rains cause flooding that washes away the post office and reveals a skeleton buried in the foundation of the building. An older woman thinks the body might be that of her long-missing son, Leo, and she asks Francesca to use her connections to find out what happened to her boy. As Francesca begins to ask questions, it becomes clear that several other men and boys have also gone missing. The men who run the village with rules of "honor" established centuries before do not appreciate Francesca's meddling, and when she finally begins to unravel the town's secrets, her life hangs in the balance, and she is forced to flee the village. Grames captures a time and place in which women have few rights and corruption is rife. Her main character is an outsider whose naivete unearths long-buried secrets. An author's note, competently read by Grames, provides insight into the origins of the novel. Narrator Lisa Flanagan provides accurate voices for Francesca and her Calabrian neighbors. VERDICT Listeners will appreciate the wildness of Grames's setting while the realistically voiced mystery unfolds.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.