Reminiscent of the works of Joanna Quinn and The Children’s Train, a poignant and hopeful novel, set in small town 1940s Italy, in which a young illiterate herdsman learns to read with the help of his two friends—a gift that will open his eyes to a new world and change the course of his life.

September 1942. Davide is an uneducated but sensitive pigskeeper, a dreamer who imagines a life beyond his small town in Southern Italy—away from the animals he cares for, from the other children who mock him for the limp he has born since birth, and the brutal hand of his Mussolini-loving father. Teresa, his friend and the only person with the courage to defend him from the schoolroom bullies, also yearns to escape.

When a group of around thirty Jews from Naples forcibly relocated by the Fascist authorities arrives, everyday life begins to change. Among them is Nicolas, a boy who brings with him an unknown world that is initially met with animosity by the villagers. But when Nicolas’ father sets up an underground school, Davide begins to attend classes and soon, as he learns to read, this illiterate herdsman begins a journey that will change him forever. As Davide, Teresa, and Nicolas grow closer, they venture into the countryside surrounding the village and into the unmarked terrain of adolescence and unspoken feelings. Though the war and a single tragic event will break them apart, their friendship indelibly marks Davide, leading him on the path to a new future beyond this small world.

Many years later, Davide, now a successful writer for the theater, sets out to find his lost friends again.

Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon