A captivating and moving new novel from the international bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos.

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-and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II-centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents 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 harboured, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. Like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret – a betrayal, a disappearance and an unspeakable act of violence – that has impacted 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 long-buried story, a page-turning excavation of the ruins of history and our commitment to justice in a fragile world. For fans of Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr and Jess Walter, it is a deeply human and transporting testament to the possibility of love and understanding across gaps of all kinds – even time.

Return to Valetto is a story of family secrets and promises, set in a nearly abandoned hilltop village in the Umbria region of Italy. Valetto is now empty save for the Serafino villa, inhabited by three elderly sisters and their even older mother.

A fourth sister, the youngest, died years earlier, and as the story opens, her son Hugh — a history professor specializing in abandoned towns — arrives on sabbatical. But his arrival is marred by an unwanted presence: A squatter of sorts has taken up residence in the villa’s cottage, which Hugh’s mother had bequeathed to him. The squatter, Elisa, claims that the long-lost patriarch of the Serafino family had gifted it to her family years earlier, after they saved him in the closing days of the war. The sisters scoff at her claim, but Hugh wonders whether there might be a kernel of truth in Elisa’s tale.

As we learn, Aldo Serafino was a partisan fighter during World War II, and was last seen by his family in 1944. They never learned what became of him, but Elisa is able to fill in the blanks. He found shelter with her family, who hid him while partisans were being hunted down — and later, as he lay dying of an infection, they cared for him in his final days. She has a letter to prove his intentions, instructing his wife to give the cottage to the Tomassi family as repayment for their kindness on his behalf. The letter was never sent — and now more than half a century later, no one is willing to believe its validity.

As Hugh spends time with Elisa, he comes to see her sincerity and her devotion to her aged mother. Through this connection, he also finally starts to take an interest in life again, after spending years mourning his late wife. As Hugh and Elisa come closer to the truth about how their families intersected so many years ago, he becomes caught up in a search for truth and justice, with unexpected consequences.

Return to Valetto was my book group’s book of the month, and I can see that we’ll have lots to discuss. At the same time, I never felt any urgency about this book, and remained emotionally distant from it throughout, even at times of major revelations about traumatic events of the past.

The storytelling is slow-paced, full of descriptions and inner thoughts. It’s contemplative and shows an appreciation of history, geography, and the sense of loss and abandonment that informs the characters’ lives, as well as their town and surroundings. Shocking elements of the family’s wartime experiences gradually come to light, but even there, a lack of true drama keeps the reader at arm’s-length.

As for the conflict over the cottage, it fizzles away by the midpoint of the novel and is replaced by more dramatic conflict concerning the former townspeople of Valetto and the roles they played during the war. There are several key turning points, but somehow the narrative never truly feels compelling.

I enjoyed the depiction of the feisty older characters, as well as the descriptions of life in this empty town, and there’s a feast scene that’s just mouth-watering. The book presents several moral dilemmas to contemplate, which are interesting to think about, even while the storytelling itself feels a bit uneventful for large stretches.

I would likely not have picked up Return to Valetto without my book group — but I don’t regret reading it. I usually enjoy historical fiction, but somehow, the pacing and tone of this book work against the drama I believe it was trying to achieve, and many of the historical elements would have benefited from just a bit more exposition to set the scene.

Return to Valetto has many interesting elements in it, but it’s not a book that earns raves from me.