Shoemakers Wife

Nestled high in the Italian Alps lies Vilminore home to Ciro a strapping mountain boy. Close by lives Enza a practical girl who longs only for a happy life for her family. When the two meet as teenagers it seems it could be the start of a life together...Then Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal and is sent to America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy leaving behind a bereft Enza. Her family faces disaster and she too is forced to flee to America with her father to secure their future. Unbeknownst to one another Ciro and Enza build fledgling lives in New York. Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza must learn to forge a life without him. From
the stately mansions of New Yorks Upper East Side to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota these star-crossed lovers meet and separate until finally the power of their love changes both of their lives forever... See Judys Review See Richards Review Download A Sample Chapter Of The Shoemakers Wife Read about the Author Exclusive Bonus Content Write a Review for The Shoemakers Wife Judys Review I love Adriana Trigianis books. They are full of Italian exuberance detailing with charming warmth the family stories of northern Italians who emigrated to the USA in the early 20th C and with much hardship forged successful lives there. Trigianis own ancestors are often the subjects of her novels and I first
came across them when I read her Big Stone Gap series; the sense of community and Italian family values translated to the US and thriving in that country despite the vast culture gap was and is immensely seductive. And she continues this Italian sensibility in The Shoemakers Wife a novel crammed with love disappointment warmth and seasoned with delicious Italian food. Thats a beguiling mixture and its hard to resist. The Shoemakers Wife begins with an adventure at once sad and yet filled with exciting possibility. Two small boys aged five and eight are left by their mother at a convent in the Italian Alps. She is a recent widow devastated by the death of her husband in faraway pre-Great War America where like so many of his compatriots he had travelled in the hope of making his fortune
working in the productive mines of New Jersey. His death in a mining accident causes his wife to have a nervous breakdown. Hence her abandonment of her two young sons; she consigns them into the care of the nuns on this Italian mountainside telling them she will come back for them within months. She doesnt. Ciro and his older brother Eduardo are left at the convent for ten years at th"