For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands—and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman. Determined to find the baby and the artist, hopeless romantic Jenny and curmudgeonly Nick must reckon with regret, betrayal, and the lives they’ve left behind.
With characteristic warmth and verve, Ann Hood captures a world of possibility and romance through the eyes of a young woman learning to claim her place in it. The Stolen Child is an engaging, timeless novel of secrets, love lost and found, and the nature of forgiveness.
"Enzo Piccolo, master craftsman of presepe, hurried along the streets of Naples with a box of glass tubes. It was April, and in April Enzo and his brother, Massimo, were working day and night to complete the figures for the Nativities. They wrapped the wire bodies in twine. They carved arms and legs from wood. They molded heads from terra-cotta. They sewed and pressed silk from San Leucio for the clothes. And they painted the expressions on the faces, the delicate features, the glass eyes, for yes, of course, the Blessed Virgin and Joseph and the three Wise Men. But also for the pizza maker, the sausage maker, the pasta maker; the fruit and vegetable vendors; the fishmongers, butchers, carpenters, acquafrescaio; opera singers and politicians; even Pope Pius-God bless him—and Totò, il principe della risata, the prince of laughter.
The presepe was not just Bethlehem, it was Naples.
"Enzo Piccolo, master craftsman of presepe, hurried along the streets of Naples with a box of glass tubes. It was April, and in April Enzo and his brother, Massimo, were working day and night to complete the figures for the Nativities. They wrapped the wire bodies in twine. They carved arms and legs from wood. They molded heads from terra-cotta. They sewed and pressed silk from San Leucio for the clothes. And they painted the expressions on the faces, the delicate features, the glass eyes, for yes, of course, the Blessed Virgin and Joseph and the three Wise Men. But also for the pizza maker, the sausage maker, the pasta maker; the fruit and vegetable vendors; the fishmongers, butchers, carpenters, acquafrescaio; opera singers and politicians; even Pope Pius-God bless him—and Totò, il principe della risata, the prince of laughter.The presepe was not just Bethlehem, it was Naples.
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