The Red House

Summary

AWARD-WINNING NOVELIST MARY MORRIS WEAVES TOGETHER AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY, A POIGNANT COMING-OF-AGE STORY, AND A LITTLE-KNOWN CORNER OF WORLD WAR II HISTORY IN THIS LYRICAL NOVEL OF FAMILY, LOSS, AND, ULTIMATELY, LOVE.

Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys, and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant, and Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, had staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage.

Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage and her life, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II and where Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood before the family moved to New Jersey. In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years. She is certain that the paintings of the red house hold the answer to her mother’s past, and her search takes her from her hometown of Brindisi deep into Puglia, where she encounters a man who knew her mother and who illuminates little-known secrets of Italy’s Second World War.

Blending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Mary Morris follows both Laura’s and Viola’s journeys from Naples to Turin and finally home. Along the way, Laura confronts the dark truths of her mother’s story and at last makes sense of her own.

“You know when you read Mary Morris that you will get exquisite writing and vibrant world-building. … But The Red House is even more unforgettable—a mystery of time, place, and character that reveals how the gaps in our personal histories are the ones that somehow become the building blocks of our lives.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name