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Sign up todayReturn to Valetto
A Novel
Narrator
Edoardo Ballerini
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Length
8 hours 39 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Fantastic book! Nice mixture of mystery, history, a family story and loss. Interesting characters and the protagonist is likeable in a comfortable way. ”
— Krystal • The Book Shoppe, Inc.
Bookseller recommendation
“The gorgeous, haunted ruins of an Umbrian town are the magnificent setting for this pitch-perfect novel by Dominic Smith. And the inhabitants of those ruins are similarly haunted - yanked at once by past and present and pulled into a shared reckoning with the ghosts of war, trauma, and fear. Much more than pretty scenery for his briskly-paced plot of family drama, the town of Valetto emerges as a central character itself. As the story rises to its explosive climax, you can't believe Smith will really pull it off. When he does, with past, present, and future forced to share the stage, your reaction will be the same as his characters': you'll gasp.”
— Steve • Charter Books
"Edoardo Ballerini’s adroit narration conveys the subtle changes in
the family, set against the splendor of Valetto’s changing landscape."- Bookpage
From the bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith’s Return to Valetto tells of a nearly abandoned Italian village, the family that stayed, and long-buried secrets from World War II.
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?
Dominic Smith’s Return to Valetto is a riveting journey into one family’s dark history, a page-turning excavation of the ruins of history and our commitment to justice in a fragile world. For fans of Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr, and Jess Walter, it is a deeply human and transporting testament to the possibility of love and understanding across gaps of all kinds—even time.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Dominic Smith is the author of six novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, which was a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and was named a best book of the year by Slate, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Kirkus Reviews. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Australian, among other publications. He grew up in Sydney, Australia, and now lives in Seattle, Washington.
Edoardo Ballerini is an American writer, director, film producer and actor. He has won many awards for his audiobook narration; within only a few years after beginning his narrating career, he won several AudioFile Earphones Awards for his work, including Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller and Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins. He narrated Kenzaburo Oe’s Nobel Prize Winning Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Joseph Finder’s The Moscow Club as well as works by John Edward and Daniel Stashower. In television and film, he is best known for his role in The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush and Romeo Must Die. The silky-voiced Ballerini is trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.
Reviews
“An intriguing saga of wartime promises and trauma . . . This intelligent family drama will keep readers turning the pages.”
—Publishers Weekly
“I was completely charmed and transported by Return to Valetto, Dominic Smith’s smart, engaging novel about the secrets held within a dying Italian village. This terrific novel, about loss and family and the weight of history, is probably as close as I’ll ever get to buying one of those picturesque Italian villas, and surely a wiser investment.”
—Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and The Angel of Rome
“Packed with lush details and a gripping narrative, Dominic Smith’s masterful novel is about the ways in which the past echoes through generations, how the human heart is both fragile and resilient, and what it takes to stand up for justice no matter how much time has passed. Return to Valetto is a story of love, loss, and the enduring power of hope. Propulsive, heartfelt, and sneakily funny—I was transfixed from page one.”
—Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept
“In this propulsive, lush, and haunting novel, Dominic Smith transports us to a near-abandoned town in Umbria and shows how the courage to voice unspeakable secrets of the past can give new life to crumbling bonds of family and community. Filled with enormous hope for the future and rich appreciation for history, Return to Valetto will make you want to race through to the end but also slow down to savor the beautiful writing and sharp insights. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek
“The revelations of Return to Valetto—those of history, and those of the heart—unfold with meticulous grace in Dominic Smith’s stately and majestic novel. With fascists breathing down our necks anew, Return to Valetto could not be more timely, but it is the fine writing and high drama that make it so memorable, and so moving.”
—Joshua Ferris, author of A Calling for Charlie Barnes
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