Synopsis

Genoa. When Agata crosses the threshold, the apartment is silent and terribly dark. Her mother has been gone for several months now. All that remains is the smell of empty rooms, the dust on the furniture, along with the echoes of memories and secrets that no one can keep anymore, and which her beloved Aunt Alice's old notebooks, long hidden, are ready to reveal. Those pages, in fact, hold the portrait of a woman Agata barely recognizes as her Aunt Alice, and the story of a great, forbidden love, one she has never known about. And it will be the tale of that secret life that will change everything, even in her present. Because there is a single thread, a buried path that unites the generations of women in the Lantieri family. Agata, once again far from Genoa, amid the reassuring glimpses of summers spent on her family's farm in Valpolcevera, will discover not only her family's true story, but will also learn that strength comes from fragility, courage from pain, and that true love knows no passing time. Above all, she will realize that that small plot of land, nestled between two hillsides in the Genoese hills, holds within it their entire history: every return is a return there, every departure is a departure from there, every loss, every birth, every joy and every pain seems to be fulfilled and made sense only among those colors. Today more than ever. Interweaving places, events, and characters, Chiara Ferraris offers the reader both a fragment of Italy's great history and an intense family saga, revealing the talent of a debut author, who keeps readers glued to the pages with her powerful narrative and elegant voice. Between past and present, L'impromissa thus reveals itself to be a wonderful story of love and belonging, where the protagonists are women, their choices, their strength, their sacrifice.