This is the story of Isabel Wainwright, searching for her father who has been missing for 20 years. He, Tom Wainwright, served in Italy during the war, and Isabel is invited there to a renaming of a piazza after her father, who saved a mother and her child from a bomb. Isabel finds herself being drawn to Italy and to finding out, at long last, what happened to her father.

This got off to a very slow start, and I very nearly abandoned the book. But something kept me reading, maybe the Italian connection (I love Italy) or the slow unfurling of the intricacies of the story, and I'm so glad I did carry on as it totally beguiled me by the end. A slow-burner definitely, but a lovely story and I definitely want to read another book by this author. ( )

I was glad of the synopsis on the back cover of this novel, which helped to get the varying time-lines of the plot into some order in my head. It is very easy to get lost, or to forget how old people are at any given time in this story of past and present, in which a daughter follows the trail of her long lost father through Italy.

The writing is confident, full of detail about the history and geography of Italy, and I got a real sense of the Mediterranean within its pages. The story is told rather more through description than dialogue, but all the way through the thoroughness of the author’s research comes through clearly.

What I liked best about the novel was the way the central mystery was set up, as well as a lot of smaller mysteries along the way. All along there is a hook pulling the reader through to the end, and there was never the remotest chance of me leaving this unfinished.

As I understand it, this novel was originally self-published, but its popularity subsequently attracted a publishing firm. On the one hand, it’s a bit depressing really – to think that a book of this quality can’t make it past the gatekeepers. On the other hand, perhaps it is a source of hope for anyone buried under rejection slips, that if your book is good enough, self-publication can still be a route to the big time. ( )