Synopsis

On May 19, 1956, the day work began on a dirt road just a few hundred meters long, there was nothing: no definitive plan, no technology, no professional expertise, no necessary funds. On October 4, 1964—just eight years later and ahead of schedule—a 755-kilometer stretch of asphalt connected Milan to Naples, North to South: it was the Autostrada del Sole. During those eight years, an army of laborers, carpenters, technicians, and planners fought to fulfill the promise of its construction. And on that road, they found their destiny. Fedele Cova, the CEO of the Autostrade company, went looking for him. Gaetano De Angelis, a laborer who had emigrated to the North, went looking for him. He swore an oath with Cova: together, they would finish that rough road, and he would be able to return home, as he had promised Maria. There, Giovanni Nigro, an engineer who lost his honor in the freezing cold of the Russian campaign, and Bruna, one of the planners, who needs that road to keep running, will find their destiny. Through a rigorous historical reconstruction, mixing fictional characters with real protagonists, "The Straight Road" is the epic and choral novel of that army and its road. Officers and soldiers, men and women, each with a dream to make true and a promise to keep. All Italian, all with their backs straight, like the road they must build.