In the town of Capurso, there is a Saint who reads the hearts of women and seems willing to grant their most ruthless desires. It is here that the lives of two families destined to become one intertwine, along with the stories of a community transitioning from the certainty of poverty to the mirage of wealth. Following the success of La città dei vivi, Nicola Lagioia returns to depict the South where he was born, using the codes of the family saga to shape a deeply contemporary, entirely personal work. For every backward glance we take, this book tells us, we find another glance questioning us from the past. And it calls us to account for our ambition and our fears, our loves and our betrayals, the illusion of being destined for something great, and how far we are willing to push ourselves to become what we want.

There are moments in life that already feel like memories or portents: moments when we feel the flow of those violent, nameless forces that define our fate. Nunzia Battista saw her destiny one evening as the sun was setting over the gravine—it was a sharp, thrilling image: a diamond necklace. Perhaps a premonition, perhaps a desire so strong that it became the engine of every future decision, every thought, every silence. Santa Barbara is first and foremost the story of a woman who wants more than life seems to offer her, and the measures she is willing to take to realize her craving. But it is also the story of Nicola, the man who will marry her and try to abandon her, and of their son Domenico, who will inherit that very same hunger and build his fortune on the ancient knowledge of the local embroiderers. It is the story of other men and women to whom Nunzia’s ravenous will—or that of the rebellious Saint to whom she addresses her reckless prayers—has assigned a role in fulfilling her fate: those who will love her, those who will betray her, those who will ignite her rage, those who will risk everything, those who must die.

After La città dei vivi, Nicola Lagioia returns to Puglia to tell the story of half a century of passions and betrayals, mothers and sons, hunger, talent, and wealth—the spinning of a carousel. He does so with a tense, agile prose that crosses through time like a wind: it rushes, settles, blows, slips into houses and voices, blends minor miseries with grand events, moves swiftly through the years, dishevels the days, and stirs up the smoke of the embers. It makes the smoke dance and uses it to draw visions, making hair, skirts, and flags flutter, turning into a siren song—into the voice of the Saint. That Santa Barbara who hid her heart in a corner of the town, waiting for a child with a pure soul to find it, touch it, and make it speak. Will Domenico be this child? Or Anna, Stella, Vito, Filippo, Ninuccio? Or perhaps a child who does not yet exist, who observes from the future, waiting to be brought into the world to grant a wish, break a curse, tell a story.