Skip to main content
Good conversation, friendly faces and great books - that's what book group is all about. We're looking forward to seeing you at our lively and engaging book discussion.
Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith
Click here to request or download. Additional formats available in eBook.
On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village-and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II-centuries of earthquakes, landslides, and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino-three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother-who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. The unwelcome guest is the captivating and no-nonsense Elisa Tomassi, who asserts that the family patriarch, Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter whom her own family harbored, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. But like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret-a betrayal, a disappearance, and an unspeakable act of violence-that has impacted Valetto across generations. Who will answer for the crimes of the past?