Showing results by author "Lauren Aimee Curtis" in All Categories

Giulia is ten. She has never left the tiny island she lives on. She never wants to. Her best friend on the island - besides her older sister - is a donkey. She ties ribbons around his head and thinks she will marry him when the time comes. Her island is one filled with widows. Widows that are watched over by the Shipmaster and his many sons. It is a place that feels stuck in time - verdant, plentiful, happy, peaceful. Until the men arrive. And the vines begin to fail. And everything changes.

On a hot day in late June, a young girl kneels outside a convent, then falls on her face. When the nuns take her in, they name her Dolores. Dolores adjusts to the rhythm of her new life - to the nuns with wild hairs curling from their chins, the soup chewed as if it were meat, the bells that ring throughout the day. But in the dark, private theatre of her mind are memories - of love motels lit by neon red hearts, discos in abandoned hospitals and a boy called Angelo. And inside her, a baby is growing.