When Luciano Benini leaves his house on the afternoon of the Feast of San Vito and does not return, neither the police nor the townspeople of Benvenuto can find him. After days of searching, his wife Natalia is convinced she knows what happened to him and announces to all of Benvenuto that the young and pretty Eva Amadeo has seduced Luciano into running away with her to America. Why else, then, would Eva leave town only days after Luciano’s disappearance? But Luciano is alive and well in Rome, living under a different name and unwilling to be found.

Fifteen years later, Eva returns to Benvenuto and the visit so traumatizes Natalia that she takes to her bed. After Eva leaves town to return to her home in New York, Natalia, unable to recover, calls on her son Fabiano in Florence to put things right. Although not convinced of his mother’s accusations against Eva, Fabiano reluctantly travels to New York at his mother’s request to learn the truth. But Eva has her own version of what happened to Luciano that day of the feast, and her guilt has kept her from revealing it all these years.

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In the winter of 1947, Alba steps off her ship in New York City to reunite with a father she hardly knows. Having been trained by her mother as a midwife in her native town of San Vittorio, Italy, she has traveled to America to study nursing. But when Alba discovers that her father’s home holds an unwelcome surprise, she resolves to return to San Vittorio against her father’s wishes. Driven by memories of her old life, she takes a job to earn money for her passage, but the lure of opportunity and the promise of new love draw her ever deeper into her New York life even as she remains determined to leave it.

Inspired by true events, Madolina’s Daughter is a story of immigration in the post-war era and one young woman’s quest for independence and self-identity. Through Alba’s eyes, it examines the complexities of family relationships, the challenges of making choices, and the wonders and apprehensions of being thrust into a foreign world.

Paperback available on Amazon.

eBook available on Amazon and other major retailors.