"Award-winning novelist Mary Morris weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming of age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, art, and love. Thirty years ago, Laura's mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her jewelery, her strangely compelling paintings, and her insulin. Viola never returned, and her family never recovered. Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II and where Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood, in an attempt to uncover the past her mother refused to speak about after the family moved to New Jersey and settled into the American dream. As Laura retraces her mother's path from her girlhood in Turin to wartorn Naples, following the few puzzle pieces she has to go on, she uncovers fragments of Viola's story which interweave with Laura's own investigation. As Laura reconnects with old neighbors and her mother's wartime compatriots, she uncovers a shadowy local legend in her search for answers: the Red House, one of Italy's Jewish internment camps, where Viola spent part of the war, and which become the repeat subject of her most arresting paintings. Mary Morris brings a family and a forgotten moment in history to vivid life with thought-provoking, sensitively wrought prose, as seen through Laura and Viola's eyes"-- Provided by publisher.