Christine of the Hills

The Adriatic at the turn of the century: a world of sun-drenched islands, hidden coves, and ancient villages where the past refuses to stay buried. When a yacht drifts toward a remote promontory and the boatman Barbarossa points toward a distant pavilion, the narrator senses a story waiting to unfold. There, glimpsed against the Mediterranean light, stands Christine, a young woman whose very presence seems to contain both vulnerability and an unnameable strength. What follows is a meditation on survival and desire, set among the wind-scoured islands where Christine has carved out an existence far from the respectable world that once rejected her. Through Barbarossa's weathered eyes, we learn of her childhood marked by abandonment and suffering, her longings for freedom and love in a society that offers neither easily. The old man who cares for her guards her secrets, but the arrival of strangers threatens to overturn her fragile peace. Pemberton writes the Adriatic with the authority of someone who has sailed its waters: the sea is treacherous, the islands seductive, and neither cares anything for human hearts. A romantic adventure with teeth, for readers who want their period fiction to carry real weight beneath the beautiful scenery.