In this arresting first novel about love and liberation, Italy is not just a place of popes and piazzas, but a cauldron of heady politics and equally heated passions.

At its center is Catherine Davidson, a young American who gets caught up in the excitement of an Eternal City on edge: women are taking to the streets to demand their rights, homegrown terrorists kneecapping their hapless targets, poor immigrants swelling the city's underbelly. Determined not to be a bystander to history nor to let her southern upbringing sabotage her newfound independence, Catherine...

In this arresting first novel about love and liberation, Italy is not just a place of popes and piazzas, but a cauldron of heady politics and equally heated passions.

At its center is Catherine Davidson, a young American who gets caught up in the excitement of an Eternal City on edge: women are taking to the streets to demand their rights, homegrown terrorists kneecapping their hapless targets, poor immigrants swelling the city's underbelly. Determined not to be a bystander to history nor to let her southern upbringing sabotage her newfound independence, Catherine...

In a rambunctious river town unsettled by the Great War and up-ended by change unlikely lovers are brought together-but dogged by inescapable bigotry. Despite the dangers, the heroine defies her southern upbringing; the hero fends off his inner demons. For family and friends, race becomes a litmus test, each revealed by his responses to the chasm which separates black from white. Can that divide-widened by distance, a disastrous marriage, the devastation of the '27 Flood-be overcome?