LOYALTY

After Lisa Scottoline's introduction, Edoardo Ballerini transports listeners to Sicily with his perfect Italian and his intelligent grasp of the people who inhabit this historical novel. Five-year-old Dante is kidnapped and hidden in a madhouse. A young lawyer, a member of an elite group of aristocrats who investigate crime in Palermo, determines to find the boy. While he's searching, listeners meet the cheese-maker who's secretly the last Jew in Sicily and a woman whose daughter is born an albino. From the decent attorney to the greedy baron to the murderous lemon grove owners, Ballerini makes them all authentic. He makes Sicily itself a character, portraying its people in a style as rugged and uncompromising as its landscape. Violence, a vendetta, and passion fill the stories in this saga. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2023]