Review by Booklist Review
It is 1960 in Calabria, a rugged, isolated region of Italy. Francesca Loftfeld, a 27-year-old American working for a nonprofit, arrives in the village of Santa Chionia to create a nursery school for the local children. The village lacks electricity, running water, roads, and a doctor. Floods are routine, and the last one unearthed a skeleton. The priest's housekeeper thinks that it might be her son. A woman in the village wonders if it is her husband. When Francesca begins investigating and discovers missing records, the locals are not pleased. Her nosy landlady, the men who hang out at the local café, and the matriarchs who have the true power in town do not want outsiders meddling in their business. Family feuds, a code of silence, and isolation put Francesca in danger and make her question the value of her mission. Grames (The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, 2019) has created a suspenseful tale set in a bleak atmosphere that will please readers who enjoy stories with a strong sense of place.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In her second novel (after The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna) Grames creates an elaborate puzzle of mystery, crime, and romance that will resonate with readers. Francesca Loftfield is an American working for a charity that installs nursery schools in isolated villages around the world, with the goal of lowering child mortality. She is sent to Santa Chionia in remote Calabria in 1960. After a flood destroys the local post office, a skeleton is discovered hidden beneath it, and two women ask for Francesca's assistance, each believing that the skeleton is a missing loved one. In her attempts to help, Francesca clumsily makes enemies of the entire village through various missteps and social faux pas, like prying into people's personal lives and accusing them of criminal activity. She also experiences culture shock in finding that the Chionoti do not share her American ideals and might not welcome her charitable pursuits. Grames creates a strong sense of place using local dialects and picturesque descriptions of Aspromonte traditions. Fans of Stella Fortuna will be gratified by the familiar setting and frank style of writing. VERDICT Recommended for mystery and historical fiction readers who are interested in the cultural complexities and hardships of life off the map.--Cate Triola
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An idealistic American gets educated about Italian realities in a remote Calabrian village. Francesca Loftfield is 27, "a bluestocking with big dreams for building a better world, one needy child at a time," when she arrives in Santa Chionia in 1960 to open a nursery school for an international charity. She has fled a disintegrating marriage, alluding to it intermittently before she finally explains how it came apart to Cicca Casile, her grumpy landlady. Cicca warns Francesca that it's dangerous to search for the identity of the skeleton uncovered beneath the rubble of the post office, which was destroyed in a flood that also wiped out the single bridge connecting the village to the outside world. But Francesca's curiosity is piqued when not one but two women claim the skeleton belongs to a loved one who allegedly emigrated to America but was actually killed by "them." As Francesca delves into the stories of Leo Romeo and Mico Scordo, she faces increasing hostility from town authorities and eventually realizes there's a lot going on in Santa Chionia that she doesn't understand. Complicating matters is the arrival of Ugo, a handsome village boy who is home from his job in Milan to help with his dying father and openly taken with the American visitor. The tangled plot becomes more so when Francesca decides there's a third possible identity for that skeleton, and the final revelations would be more compelling if she were a more engaging narrator. The amount of time she spends agonizing over her not-yet-ex-husband becomes irritating, as does her cluelessness about a major character she continues to trust long after readers have seen multiple glaring clues that he's in on all the dirty deeds. Despite some wonderfully rendered portraits of individual villagers and vivid descriptions of the Calabrian landscape, the novel never quite clicks. Stronger on atmosphere than plot and narrative focus. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
