Ripeness: A Novel

A story of sisterhood, forbidden desire, lost connection, and what it means to find a home among strangers.

Edith, just out of school, has been sent from her quiet English life to rural Italy. It is the 1960s, and her mother has issued strict instructions: tend to her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, in the final weeks of her scandalous pregnancy; help at the birth; make a phone call that will summon the nuns who will spirit the child away to a new home.

Decades later, happily divorced, recently ...