Description
The Italian Wife is a historical fiction novel with elements of romance, mystery and political intrigue, set in Mussolini’s Italy in 1932. Architect Isabella Berotti is admiring the clock tower she helped design when a stranger asks her to look after her young daughter for a moment. The woman then climbs the tower and takes her own life, leaving Isabella responsible for the frightened child and drawn into questions about her own troubled past. With the help of Roberto Falco, a photographer working for Mussolini’s propaganda machine, Isabella begins to uncover secrets that could put them both in danger.
Against the grand piazzas, emerging towns and countryside of Fascist Italy, Kate Furnivall explores a society shaped by propaganda, fear and political repression, while weaving together a story of love, betrayal and long-buried secrets. The fictional town of Bellina is based on Latina, one of the new towns created during Mussolini’s reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, giving the novel a distinctive historical setting.
This atmospheric, fast-paced novel is well suited to readers who enjoy romantic historical fiction, political intrigue and mysteries set against dramatic periods of twentieth-century history.
