A riveting coming-of-age story with the precision of a Hitchcock noir by a masterful new voice in Italian literature.

A young boy is murdered, shaking a small community to its core. A girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods.

1978 in Ponte, Northern Italy, an unbearably hot summer, like so many others. Elia Furenti is 16, living in a secluded house with his parents, a life so unremarkable that even unhappiness has been accepted as normal.

Elia's father lost his job, and now he begins to lose himself in the darkest corners of his mind. Then a new friend arrives in Ponte, firmly propelling Elia to the edge of adulthood, and everything starts to unravel.