Cristian is enterprising and determined. Maddalena is tenacious and quite able to imagine - and defend - her own future.

Cristian and Maddalena have always known each other, and if fate had not gone awry they might already be married. But between them, exactly in the middle, there is Domenico: Cristian''s childhood friend who has grown up alongside him like a brother. And when Cristian succumbs to the fate of the Chironis - that curse of illnesses, murders and suicides that has blighted his family over the years - it is Domenico that Maddalena marries.

Taking his trilogy of the Chironi family up to the present day, Marcello Fois has woven a delicately detailed story, full of dormant passions, plot twists, betrayals and reconciliations. The epic scope and the dramatic tension of his writing means that while his trilogy might be the story of one family on a tiny island, it has a universality, a humanity and a power to speak to anyone of us.