A riveting coming-of-age story with the precision of a Hitchcock noir by a masterful new voice in Italian literature.
"Suspenseful and elegiac, as beautiful as it is horrifying." —Karen Dionne
"A densely layered psychological mystery." —Chicago Tribune
"Reads like a collaboration between Daphne du Maurier and Megan Abbott." —The Irish Times
Over the course of one oppressively hot summer in the small town of Ponte, in northern Italy, one family's secrets are revealed and the community is torn apart by a terrible crime.
Sixteen-year-old Elia Furenti lives with his parents in a secluded house, a tight-knit family whose rhythms are dictated by the shifts in his father's emotional state. When the closure of the nearby factory leaves Elia's father without a job, however, home becomes an increasingly fraught environment. With the summer heat pressing down, Elia's father begins to spiral, his moods becoming increasingly dark and erratic, while Elia's mother refuses to acknowledge that anything has changed.
Meanwhile, a forbidden relationship blossoms, as Elia seeks refuge from the silence and tension at home. Events reach a breaking point one moonlit night, when a young woman climbs into a van and is taken into the deep, dark woods . . .
