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A novel
by Juliet Grames
One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The bestselling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy.
Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there's no mail, either.
Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don't the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.
Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world's most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.
"Grames shines in this intriguing story of buried secrets in an isolated Southern Italian village ... She excels at rendering the experiences of living as a stranger in a close-knit community ... and she manages to keep the reader guessing as to the truth about who was murdered and why. This is a superior literary mystery." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Despite some wonderfully rendered portraits of individual villagers and vivid descriptions of the Calabrian landscape, the novel never quite clicks. Stronger on atmosphere than plot and narrative focus." —Kirkus Reviews
"Grames creates a strong sense of place using local dialects and picturesque descriptions of Aspromonte traditions. Fans of Stella Fortuna will be gratified by the familiar setting and frank style of writing. Recommended for mystery and historical fiction readers who are interested in the cultural complexities and hardships of life off the map." —Library Journal
"A suspenseful tale...will please readers who enjoy stories with a strong sense of place." —Booklist
"A beautiful novel, filled with riches, not the least of which are its evocative setting in the Calabrian hills, and its cast of vivid characters, large and small, who will stay with you long after you've turned the final page." —Dan Fesperman, author of Winter Work
This information about The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Juliet Grames is the bestselling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Real Simple, Parade, and The Boston Globe, and she is the recipient of an Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America. She is editorial director at Soho Press in New York.
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