Arturo's Island: A Novel (Italia)

ON A SMALL ISLAND in the Tyrrhenian Sea there lives a boy as innocent as a seabird. Arturos mother is dead; his father away. Black-clad women care for him give him the freedom to come and go as he likes. Then the father returns with a new wife Nunziata a girl barely older than Arturo. At first hatred and contempt are all the boy feels for his stepmother. In time Arturo and Nunziata re-create the tragedy and passion that are as old as the history of men and women.