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Elise Valmorbida

Biography

Elise Valmorbida

Elise Valmorbida grew up Italian in Australia but fell in love with London. She is the author of the acclaimed literary novels MATILDE WALTZING, THE TV PRESIDENT and THE WINDICK STICK. An award-winning producer and script consultant, she wrote SAXON: The Making of a Guerrilla Film. Her other nonfiction works include THE BOOK OF HAPPY ENDINGS, now published in four languages across four continents.

Photo Credit: Geza Singer

Books by Elise Valmorbida

by Elise Valmorbida - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Maria Vittoria is 25 when her father brings home the man who will become her husband. It is 1923 in the austere Italian mountain village where her family has lived for generations. Taking just the linens she has sewn that make up her dowry and a statue of the Madonna that sits by her bedside, Maria leaves the only life she has ever known to begin a family. But her future will not be what she imagines. THE MADONNA OF THE MOUNTAINS follows Maria over the next three decades, as she moves to the town where she and her husband become shopkeepers, through the birth of their five children, through the hardships and cruelties of the National Fascist Party Rule and the Second World War.