The Sardinian Story

Apennine Mountains, Italy, 1965 Leonora Bacchetti was once a happy child. But at the age of seventeen she has become a wild and rebellious young woman who leaves her parents in despair when she runs away from home with a group of itinerant travellers. In the eyes of their friends and neighbours in the tight-knit village of Montacciolo, her parents’ good name is ruined. At first, Leonora keeps in touch with her mother and father, sending letters and postcards from different countries until, very abruptly, her correspondence stops. The girl has vanished. Vague, unreliable rumours of her fate abound, but newspaper appeals, police and private investigations reveal nothing. Until, eighteen years later, in the midst of a snowstorm, a stranger from Sardinia knocks on the door of Leonora’s father’s little mountain house. Now a widower, he has come to terms with never knowing what happened to his daughter. But everything changes when the unexpected visitor claims that he has new information. The two men quickly bond and gradually begin to piece together the truth about Leonora , provoking deep questions about her life and how they have lived their own – questions about love, loyalty, honesty and what being a family really means. The Sardinian Story is a novel of exquisite power and deep emotion which will live long in the memories of its readers.