Return to Valetto: A Novel

Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Fiction
A Best Book of the Year: BookPage
A Must-Read: The New York Post and The Christian Science Monitor
"A story of love, loss, and the enduring power of hope. I was transfixed from page one." Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept 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 that survived centuries of earthquakes and landslides and became a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II, it has since been nearly abandoned, as residents sought better lives elsewhere. Only ten 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 affected 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 past, a page-turning excavation of the ruins of history, and a probing look at our commitment to justice in a fragile world. It is also a deeply human and transporting testament to the possibility of love and understanding across gaps of all kinds-even time.