I became lost in this Italian family story and felt like I lived there with them. The writing style is excellent, and the book is a page turner--not because of suspense but to see how it all unravels.. I have traveled to Italy many times and never knew of the many abandoned villages. One is the central character is this novel. The characters are well-developed and believable, the setting is fascinating, and story is compelling. Is there anything else to want in a book? I already have started another book by this author.

Just two days ago, prior to reading Return to Valletto, I was sent a CNN article about the small hamlet of Irsina, in Italy, whose population has been reduced to ten villagers. Now being repopulated by Americans, the Danish and Canadians ,as well as others, they are transforming old houses and villas without paying any purchase price or under market value. if they intend to live in them. What a coincidence I was offered a chance to read Dominic Smith’s new novel about a tiny town destroyed by earthquakes not unlike those hamlets.
Sometimes you are lucky enough to begin to read a novel that captures your imagination after one paragraph. This was one of those moments. The wonderful syncopation of the language, the narrative, and the specific details of the Italian flowers, trees, and land formations transports you to Valletto. The characters are incredibly drawn and so idiosyncratically lovable . This fictional Valletto is south of Orvieto and was occupied by the Germans during World War II and still bears those deep repercussive scars. After the earthquakes, most inhabitants left and abandoned their homes. As the story unfolds, secrets are revealed in the family of the four remaining Serafina women and their grandson who has come from the United States for a sabbatical. He has spent many summers here as a young boy and feels a deep connection to the village. Those echoes of the past become drumbeats as his grandmother reaches her 100 birthday and the party plans proceed. As many truths come to light before the celebration, the secrets of the past are revealed. Secrets cannot remain hidden or forgotten but exposed and confronted to understand the ramifications that ensued and promote healing. A brilliant literary opus that will not be released until June is the only negative. I cannot tell everyone to read it until then. Bravo Mr. smith! .

I just was not interested in this book. I found the plot too slow. Just did not hold my interest. Some books are that way. Others will enjoy it b

A slow and melancholic story about the importance of family, shadows lurking from the past, abandonment, and condemnation. It´s not for everyone, but for those who do like the tastes and fragrances of Italy and its nostalgia.

Professor Hugh Fisher studies abandoned towns in Italy, of which, we discover, there are many. His own ancestral village of Valetto is almost one of them, empty, except for the house where his three aunts and grandmother live. And Valetto has another notable feature--it was separated from the rest of the rugged landscape by an earthquake in the 1970s, so its only connection from the mainland, so to speak, is a narrow wooden bridge that cannot be crossed by vehicles the size of a donkey cart.

Hugh has inherited a stone cottage from his mother, but when he arrives to spend the summer there he discovers that someone has taken possession of the little house, saying that his vanished grandfather left it to her family in the 1940s.

This opens a whole can of worms as Hugh's family fights to keep the cottage, while discovering a connection between the two families that stretch back to World War II. Battling his own grief from the recent losses of his wife and mother, Hugh tries to find a balanced solution to the issue only to find that neither side has the least interest in it. He loves his aunts and grandmother but is also attracted to Elisa, the woman who's moved into the stone cottage.

What I love about Dominic Smith as a writer is that he sets his novels everywhere from 17th century Amsterdam to 1890s Papua New Guinea and now to a dangling village in Italy and is able to fully inhabit each era with assurance. "Return to Valetto" builds slowly and my pull to the story waxed and waned. Stick with it. The return to Valetto results in a painful, yet satisfying, end.

An earthquake drove people out of Valetto. It was a ghost town, houses and belongings left behind. But it was the war that demolished their community in the deepest way. While some worked underground against the Fascists, one man was enthralled by Mussolini. At war’s end, he was driven from his home, only returning to visit his son in the summer, but he left a silent legacy that warped lives for generations.

Traumatic experiences are suppressed, never talked about. But the trauma doesn’t go away; it is passed through generations.

With gorgeous prose and an unforgettable setting, Return to Valetto is a powerful story of war’s evil.

A history professor at a small Michigan college, Hugh researches abandoned cities, like his mother’s town of Valetto. He returns each summer to see his grandmother and aunts, three of the town’s remaining ten residents. This year, his grandmother turns 100 years old. She has invited everyone to return to the village for a celebration.

Hugh discovers that his cottage is occupied by Elisa, who claims that his grandfather left the house to her mother. During the war, Hugh’s grandfather Aldo went north to help the partisans and never returned. Aldo stayed with Elisa’s grandmother, whose daughter was living with his family back in Valetto, removed to a safe place from the war.

Hugh’s and Elisa’s mothers had been best friends when they disappeared for three days. The girls were never the same after they returned. Hugh’s mother was mentally disturbed all her short life. He learns that her friend has also struggled.

While Hugh’s family investigates Elisa’s claim to the cottage, he learns that Elisa’s mother has the answers to what had happened. Learning the horrible truth, the family plans a confrontation.

The townspeople who have returned to Valetto for a birthday party are faced with their complicity during the war. And then condemn the old fascist.

Return to Valetto reminded me once again why I love this writer.

I previously have read the author’s novels The Last Painting of Sara De Vos, The Electric Hotel, and The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Dominic Smith’s “Return to Valetto,” which drew my attention for looking to be about a particular interest of mine, coming to terms with wartime crime, begins promisingly enough, with its historian narrator, Hugh Fisher, having a special interest in Italian villages abandoned in the wake of World War II.
No stranger himself to abandonment for having lost both his wife and mother in a relatively short span, Hugh is planning a trip to Italy for academic lectures and conferences, his visit facilitated by his having been left a cottage in Italy by his deceased mother. However, on the eve of his departure he learns from his aunts there that a woman they regard as a squatter has staked out a claim on the cottage with an assertion that it had been promised to her family in exchange for help they provided Hugh's grandfather when he'd been a partisan in the war.
Nevertheless, Hugh sets out, planning to stay with his aunts and also looking to find out more about the cottage situation as well as intending to meet up in Italy with his adult daughter, who is also an academician and who is concerned about Hugh's state of mind after his personal losses. He needs to re-engage with life, she feels, ideally with a woman.
And in the way of novels, that opportunity presents itself in the person of the cottage claimant, a woman appealing enough that he begins a relationship with her and from whom he gets further details on the wartime episode that led to her being left the cottage. However, there are gaps in what she knows, including the circumstances behind a mysterious three-day disappearance of her mother and Hugh's grandmother during the war. The answer, it develops in the course of the novel, has to do with a town fascist of the time who, it also develops, is still very much alive and with whom Hugh's aunts, upon learning of his still being alive, plan a confrontation at the grandmother's 100th birthday celebration.
All of which makes for a reasonably satisfying reading experience, though the tone of the novel, for all the horribleness of the incident at its core, is curiously tame – in contrast, say, with William Styron's considerably harder-edged "Set This House on Fire," which I was often put in mind of as I read Smith's novel, principally for the vivid descriptions of Italy in both novels. Indeed, so vivid is the descriptive detail in Smith's case that it threatens to overwhelm the actual story line – the final confrontation, for instance, is delayed by page upon page of description of preparations for the feast. Still, the confrontation, when it comes, is satisfying enough, if somewhat abbreviated, and the descriptiveness, for all its perhaps excessiveness, should make the novel particularly appealing for anyone with a special affection for Italy.

f you’re looking for authentic Italy, of the crumbling villa variety, look no further. Valetto is a dying town–its population has dwindled to just ten. But Hugh Fisher has deep ties to the village in Umbria where his aunts live and has returned to celebrate the 100th birthday of his grandmother. As Hugh navigates recent losses of his mother and wife, he also confronts the brutal weight of history. Not one word out of place, saturated with imagery and atmosphere while paying homage to family ties, this is one masterpiece of a novel. I devoured it and so will you.

this was a really well done novel, it left me on the edge of my seat. It felt like a real family and the secrets were wonderfully done. It was written so well and did what I was hoping for from the description, I enjoyed getting to go on this journey. The characters worked well in the world and were wonderfully written. I enjoyed the way Dominic Smith wrote this and can't wait for more from him.

"During my boyhood summers in Valetto, when Silvio Ruffo, the disgraced fascist and pharmacist, returned from his Rome exile on occasional weekends, I had played chess with him in the square, had breathed his cigar smoke, and had listened to his litany of complaints about Italian politics while he fed stray cats from his coat pockets."