A sequel to The Girls of Piazza d'Amore, this novel is a sweeping epic that chronicles the lives of three women of different generations, all living in Montreal, but connected and haunted by the same Italian village past. After her childhood friend, Lucia- protagonist of The Girls of Piazza D'Amore - is found beaten, an apparent victim of domestic violence, and Lucia's husband disappears, Cathy, a high school teacher, takes Lucia's daughter, Angie, into her home. This arrangement causes conflict between Cathy and her live-in boyfriend, Sean. There are rumours that Lucia's family is connected to the Montreal Mafia. Sean is involved in Federal politics and sees Angie's presence in their home as a political liability. Out of loyalty to her old friend, Cathy refuses to let Angie go. Meanwhile, Lucia's husband is located in Italy from where he makes accusations of corruption against Lucia's family and their business partner with ties to the Liberal Member of Parliament for whom Sean works. These revelations are brought to the attention of the Montreal tabloids by a journalist, Antoine Le Grand, with whom Cathy has had a problematic relationship since her teens, when she solicited his help as a writing mentor. All of these elements come to a head when Cathy returns home after a Halloween party and discovers Angie is missing. She desperately searches for her and, in doing so, comes face to face the underbelly of the city and the school.

A quintessential Calabrian love story. The Girls of Piazza d'Amore traces the lives of three village girls and the forces that lead them to leave home for a new life across the ocean. Set in southern Italy in the 1950s, Connie Guzzo-McParland's short novel walks us through the piazza and the narrow alleys of her own childhood, imaginatively recreating an entire world as seen through the eyes of a young girl who accompanies her friends on their evening passeggiate to the spring water fountain and carries their love notes to the boys they love. The joys of Calabrian village life are palpable, and so are its frustrations and heartbreaks, but this is a world on the cusp of irrevocable change, as family after family is leaving. And that's what is most heartbreaking of all.