Tuscany, 1940s. Nada is twenty years old, a single mom of a two-year-old. Her husband has left to fight the war in Africa, her family is far away, and in the new city where she lives, Marina di Carrara, a coastal town in Tuscan, she knows almost no one. Hermann is a forty-year old German soldier with a family in his country.

They meet by chance one winter afternoon on the Tuscan green hills and fall in love. They decide to escape together: she from a oppressive family, and he from an army whose values he doesn’t share. They join the Resistenza, full of hope and drunk with love, convinced that the future is on their side. Giorgio van Straten skillfully traces Nada and Hermann’s intense filmic love story, full of twists and turns, that left the readers inebriated and questioning its power and consequences: is love a force capable of overwhelming us, even making us risk our lives? Do the great dreams of youth impact our entire existence, or are they destined to become an inexhaustible source of nostalgia and frustration? Can the scars of such overwhelming experiences be hidden and forgotten?

With the literary finesse of his pen and the ability to delve into history and psychology with equal intensity, Giorgio van Straten crafts a novel that deeply engages with the urgencies of the present, keeping the reader hooked until the final page to share with Nada and Hermann the challenges and enchantment of youth.