Troubling Love

A woman goes home to Naples after her mother’s mysterious death in a “tour de force."

Following her mother’s untimely and unexplained drowning, which was preceded by a series of strange phone calls, forty-five-year-old Delia leaves Rome and embarks on a voyage of discovery through the beguiling yet often hostile streets of her native Naples.

She is searching for the truth about her family and the men in her mother’s life, past and present, including an abusive husband.

What she discovers will be more unsettling than she imagines, but will also reveal truths about herself, in this psychological mystery marked by tactile, beautifully restrained prose about mothers and daughters and the complicated knot of lies and emotions that binds them.

With the quick-paced mystery guiding the story, Delia explores her relationship with her mother, unraveling memories and secrets repressed since childhood and coming to terms with an upbringing filled with jealousy and violence.