Stars in an Italian Sky


 
 
 
 ALSO BY JILL SANTOPOLO
 
 Everything After
 More Than Words
 The Light We Lost
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 G. P. Putnam’s Sons
 Publishers Since 1838
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
 penguinrandomhouse.com
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Jill Santopolo
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Santopolo, Jill, author.
 Title: Stars in an Italian sky / Jill Santopolo.
 Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2023]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022047507 (print) | LCCN 2022047508 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593419175 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593419182 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3619.A586 S73 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.A586 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20221019
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047507
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047508
 p. cm.
 ISBN 9780593712863 (international edition)
 Cover design: Vi-An Nguyen
 Cover images: (couple) Ullstein Bild / akg-images; (background) Focusstock / Getty Images
 Book design by Lorie Pagnozzi, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
 This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142549203_c0_r0
 
 
 
 For my spectacular Gram, Beverly Franklin, with so much love
 
 
 
 
 
 Prologue
 
 
 
 SERRALUNGA D’ALBA, ITALY
 At Villa Della Rosa, autumn was fading. The beauty of the summer had given way to the fall harvest, but now the trees, the bushes, the vines—all of them were bare. Their yearly slumber had begun. Vincenzo wondered if they dreamed during those long months. Dreamed of sunshine, dreamed of color, dreamed of life.
 When Vincenzo closed his eyes, he dreamed only of her.
 Giovanna smiling at him.
 Giovanna laughing, the sun on her face.
 Giovanna angry, her cheeks flushed, her eyes burning.
 Giovanna writing him a letter. A letter, now open beside him, that left him no hope.
 But even with that knowledge, he preferred, still, to dream. To imagine that once again their hearts would belong to each other. That he would no longer have to paint her from memory alone.
 He looked up at the stars and wished upon all of them that one day his dream would come true.
 
 
 Chapter 1
 
 
 
 GENOA, ITALY
 Then
 Giovanna’s heart leapt every time the door to her father’s tailor shop opened.
 It was only six months ago that she, her father, and Faustina had returned from Saluzzo, where they’d spent most of the war. In the autumn of 1942, after a bomb blew out the windows in their shop and in their home above it, her father had boarded up the windows, taken what he could, and brought them all to the farmhouse his parents shared with his brother, Enzo, and his family in the mountain town where he was born.
 When they came back to Genoa nearly three years later, they weren’t sure they’d be able to open the shop again. The boards across the windows had been splintered, the floor covered in dirt and debris. Bombs had rained down on the city while they were away.
 As they had stood staring at the shattered wood and chunks of glass and stone, Faustina spotted a half-destroyed piece of paper crumpled under the rubble—it looked like it had been there for years—and bent down to work it free. “A propaganda leaflet,” she’d said, “from the Allied forces: The government in Rome says: the war goes on. This is why our bombing goes on.” Faustina shook her head. “The government in Rome cost us our shop.”
 “It’s not so bad,” Giovanna had said softly, walking over to her sister and running her fingers across the leaves carved into the counter, which was still standing at the back of the shop. Her fingertips came away covered in soot and dust.
 Federico had wrapped an arm around each of his daughters. “The war is over,” he’d said then, kissing first Faustina on the top of her head and then Giovanna. “We are still here.”
 “Are our customers?” Faustina had asked.
 Federico sighed. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
 
 * * *
 And they had seen. Their customers had slowly come back, some looking to have their clothing remade to fit bodies that had become leaner during wartime, some wanting skirts tapered to look fashionable again, some carrying a coat or a dress or a sweater left behind by a loved one, asking Federico if there was anything he could do to keep their memories alive.
 “I can help,” Giovanna told a young mother whose husband had died only six months after their child had entered the world. She took the coat the mother brought and turned it into a stuffed rabbit for the little girl, its ears lined with scraps of satin, its face embroidered with gold thread. The whole time she was sewing, Giovanna wished she still had one of her mother’s coats. It had been more than six years since her mother died; Giovanna had been fourteen then. She wished she’d been able to carry a small piece of her mother with her all these years, hold that piece in her arms, keep her close. Giovanna sewed her own longing into that bunny.
 And now the woman had returned for it.
 “One moment,” Giovanna said to her, ducking behind the curtain into the back room of the tailor shop, where her father and her sister were working.
 She picked the stuffed rabbit off the high shelf where she’d left it to