Synopsis

Bartolomeo, a dazed and kind philosophy student, finds a letter addressed to his grandmother Lina at the bottom of a drawer: a few lines, "Missing, presumed drowned," that contradict the family story of Grandpa Bart's death at the front. No one can tell him more about the grandfather whose name he bears but whom he has never met. Not his grandmother, who recently passed away; not his father, who knows nothing and seems interested in knowing. The clues that emerge lead him to the home of Florence, a magnificent elderly Englishwoman who frequented his grandparents in Little Italy, London's Italian immigrant neighborhood. She seems to know a great deal, even if for some reason she doesn't want to talk. While Bartolomeo begins his search for the truth, Florence picks up the threads of the past for him. The love for Michele and the friendship with Lina and Bart resurface, as do the life of Clerkenwell, the industrious cheerfulness of the cafés, the singing and music, the crowds at the Madonna del Carmelo procession, the evening dances. Until Bartolomeo and Florence set out on a journey that will lead them to shed light on an event long forgotten: the sinking of the Arandora Star, loaded with Italian internees and torpedoed by the Germans. In the tragedy of July 2, 1940, 446 civilians drowned, deported after Mussolini's declaration of war on England, innocent victims of suspicion and xenophobia. Bartolomeo and Florence rescue the stories of those shattered lives from silence, and move forward, close to each other, a boy growing into a man and an old woman rediscovering the tenacity of youth, toward the final, incredible revelation.