Product Description
Family secrets and dramatic encounters reach from Ireland to Italy and across the generations.
Against her family’s wishes, the recently widowed Isabel agrees to leave Ireland and accompany her cousin Grace on a holiday to Italy. Their journey takes them to a British Military Cemetery near the Adriatic, to the grave of a young soldier who died in 1943. With the help of a veteran of the Italian campaign, Grace and Isabel unearth family secrets that have lain hidden for more than half a century.
The novel shifts between the contemporary perspectives of Isabel and her manipulative mother, Rita, and the 1943 diary of a young Venetian woman. Isabel and Grace realise that the past is not dead and can still change their families’ lives forever. Out of the sorrows of war, both women see a chance of happiness. Can these new discoveries heal the rifts between the women, and explain Rita’s apparent rejection of her daughter?
Monica Tracey writes with sympathy, warmth and wisdom. Her gentle, assured storytelling will please a wide readership, and her composed and confident prose is a joy. She writes about the big and universal themes, love and loss, war and a kind of conditional peace, bringing to these topics two qualities that rarely go together: a depth of experience, and a keen appreciation of life’s pleasures and possibilities. - Hilary Mantel
This is Monica Tracey’s second novel. Her first, ‘Unweaving the Thread’ received excellent reviews across the Irish Press and magazines such as Myslexia, was recommended by ‘Richard and Judy’ and was a runner up for the Irish Prize.
Against her family’s wishes, the recently widowed Isabel agrees to leave Ireland and accompany her cousin Grace on a holiday to Italy. Their journey takes them to a British Military Cemetery near the Adriatic, to the grave of a young soldier who died in 1943. With the help of a veteran of the Italian campaign, Grace and Isabel unearth family secrets that have lain hidden for more than half a century.
The novel shifts between the contemporary perspectives of Isabel and her manipulative mother, Rita, and the 1943 diary of a young Venetian woman. Isabel and Grace realise that the past is not dead and can still change their families’ lives forever. Out of the sorrows of war, both women see a chance of happiness. Can these new discoveries heal the rifts between the women, and explain Rita’s apparent rejection of her daughter?
Monica Tracey writes with sympathy, warmth and wisdom. Her gentle, assured storytelling will please a wide readership, and her composed and confident prose is a joy. She writes about the big and universal themes, love and loss, war and a kind of conditional peace, bringing to these topics two qualities that rarely go together: a depth of experience, and a keen appreciation of life’s pleasures and possibilities. - Hilary Mantel
This is Monica Tracey’s second novel. Her first, ‘Unweaving the Thread’ received excellent reviews across the Irish Press and magazines such as Myslexia, was recommended by ‘Richard and Judy’ and was a runner up for the Irish Prize.
