Sardinia, the early twentieth century. Giovanna Era's husband Costantino has been convicted of murdering his own uncle, though innocent, he accepted the guilty verdict as self-imposed penance for marrying her through a civil ceremony rather than a costly church wedding. With Costantino imprisoned and no means to provide for herself, her mother, and her young son, Giovanna faces an impossible choice. She divorces him under a new law allowing wives of convicts to remarry, binding herself to a wealthy but brutal landowner. Her child dies of malnutrition. Years later, when the true killer confesses and Costantino returns, the two begin a forbidden affair that will destroy them both. Deledda renders a world where ancient superstition collides with modern law, where poverty chains its victims more surely than any prison, and where love becomes another form of self-destruction. This is tragedy of impossible choices and inescapable fate, dense, fatalistic, and aching with sensory detail of a remote island world.
