Set in Italy the story opens with Isabel Wainwright as she embarks on a
trip to the town of Petriano. Her
father, Tom Wainwright, arrived in the town in 1944 as a British soldier, just as
the Second World War was coming to an end.
Here he got to know the Parini family and fell in love with their eldest
daughter, Giuliana. It was here that he saved a child’s life from a bombed
building. To honour his heroism the town
want to rename a piazza after him and Isabel goes to Italy to accept the honour
on her father’s behalf. She struggles to
explain to the people who so warmly welcome her that she doesn’t know whether
her father is dead or alive because her father left home twenty years ago, when
she was seventeen, and he hasn’t been heard of since. He went out one day and never came back and
she and her embittered mother, Patricia, have been trying to come to terms with
this fact ever since. Isabel remembers
that her father was infatuated with the Leaning Tower of Pisa so it is here she
goes in the hope of retracing his footsteps and to learn more about him. Here she meets Matteo and falls in love. The book alternates between the point of view
of Isabel in the present and Tom in the past. The descriptions of Italy were magical. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
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