ABOUT
THE BOOK

This is a story told by a boy in his thirteenth year, recorded in his secret diary. His life is about to change; his world, about to open. He lives in Montedidio – God’s Mountain – a cluster of alleys in the heart of Naples. He brings a paycheck home every Saturday from Master Errico’s carpentry workshop where he sweeps the floor. He is on his way to becoming a man – his boy’s voice is abandoning him. His wooden boomerang is neither toy nor tool, but something in between. Then there is Maria, the thirteen-year-old girl who lives above him and, like so many girls, is wiser than he. She carries the burden of a secret life herself. She’ll speak to him for the first time this summer. There is also his friendship with a cobbler named Rafaniello, a Jewish refugee who has escaped the horrors of the holocaust, who has no idea how long he’s been on this earth, and who is said to sprout wings for a blessed few.
It is 1960, a young man’s summer of discovery. A time for a boy with innocent hands and pure heart to look beyond the ordinary in everyday things to see the far-reaching landscape, and all of its possibilities, from a rooftop terrace on God’s Mountain.