Loyalty
#1 bestselling author Lisa Scottoline presents Loyalty, an emotional, action-packed epic of love and justice, set during the rise of the Mafia in Sicily.
Loyalty can save a soul--or destroy one. Franco Fiorvanti is a handsome lemon grower toiling on the estate of a baron. He dreams of owning his own grove, but the rigid class system of Sicily thwarts his ambition. Determined to secure a better future, Franco will do anything to prove his loyalty to the baron. But when the baron asks him to kidnap a little boy named Dante, Franco makes a decision that will change his life--and even the history of Sicily--forever.
Gaetano Catalano is an idealistic young lawyer whose devotion to justice is tantamount to a calling. He's a member of the Beati Paoli, a real-life secret society of aristocrats who investigate crime in Palermo, a city riddled with graft. Gaetano sets out to find the boy and punish the kidnapper, but his mission leads him to a darker place than he had ever imagined.
Meanwhile, Mafalda Pancari is a new mother rejoicing at the birth of her daughter, Lucia, when disaster strikes. And Alfredo D'Antonio is a reclusive goatherd under constant threat of being discovered as a Jew. How the lives of these unforgettable characters collide makes Loyalty an epic tale of good versus evil, as the story twists and turns to its monumental showdown.
Readers will be transported to the dramatic and ruggedly beautiful island of Sicily, the jewel of the Mediterranean, where lush lemon groves and mouth-watering cuisine contrast with a turbulent history of colonization and corruption. Scottoline brings her decades of thriller writing to historical fiction, creating in Loyalty a singular novel that no reader will be able to put down.
Loyalty can save a soul--or destroy one. Franco Fiorvanti is a handsome lemon grower toiling on the estate of a baron. He dreams of owning his own grove, but the rigid class system of Sicily thwarts his ambition. Determined to secure a better future, Franco will do anything to prove his loyalty to the baron. But when the baron asks him to kidnap a little boy named Dante, Franco makes a decision that will change his life--and even the history of Sicily--forever.
Gaetano Catalano is an idealistic young lawyer whose devotion to justice is tantamount to a calling. He's a member of the Beati Paoli, a real-life secret society of aristocrats who investigate crime in Palermo, a city riddled with graft. Gaetano sets out to find the boy and punish the kidnapper, but his mission leads him to a darker place than he had ever imagined.
Meanwhile, Mafalda Pancari is a new mother rejoicing at the birth of her daughter, Lucia, when disaster strikes. And Alfredo D'Antonio is a reclusive goatherd under constant threat of being discovered as a Jew. How the lives of these unforgettable characters collide makes Loyalty an epic tale of good versus evil, as the story twists and turns to its monumental showdown.
Readers will be transported to the dramatic and ruggedly beautiful island of Sicily, the jewel of the Mediterranean, where lush lemon groves and mouth-watering cuisine contrast with a turbulent history of colonization and corruption. Scottoline brings her decades of thriller writing to historical fiction, creating in Loyalty a singular novel that no reader will be able to put down.
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Community Reviews
I haven't read historical fiction in so long but picked this up after seeing it on the NY Times bestseller list and knowing that the author is from Philadelphia. The suspense and interwoven real-life characters as well as the descriptions of the beauty of Sicily was intriguing. But, even more fascinating to me was learning about the early start of the Mafia. Definitely recommend this one and will be adding more of Scottoline's books to my future reading list.
“Appearances were important in Palermo…Palermitani were expert at keeping secrets…Palermitani moved on the way they always did after a crime, thanking God they weren’t today’s victims and hoping they wouldn’t be tomorrow’s…There’s a difference between law and justice in Palermo. Law protects nobles…and they use you to keep power. But justice protects men like me, and we rely on ourselves for its dispensation.”
“Strong, bold, and daring. The Sicilian word for such qualities was mafioso…They were the first Mafia family in Sicily, controlling the Conca d’Oro and Palermo. They had made a vast fortune, and…an even bigger future…The Fiorvanti family is fictional, but the origin of the Mafia depicted herein is true” tracing “the roots to the luxuriant lemon groves around Palermo, arising from a unique set of circumstances in the 1800s, which combined legal, social, political, and even agricultural factors.” Every one of Lisa Scottoline’s novels, “whether historical or contemporary, fleshes out the relationship between law and justice, and Loyalty is the best case in point to date…Loyalty is a fascinating quality, and shaping its contours is a leitmotif throughout this novel.”
“I, Don Franco Fiorvanti, swear an oath of loyalty to you tonight. I promise to serve our family above all others. I will prove my honor and respect for our clan by omerta, my absolute silence about our family…The oath I swear tonight is sacred, and if I breach it or disobey, I deserve death.” But what happens when the enemy is family? “I heard the oath you made that night to the men, when you were trying to get them on your side. You swore loyalty to them. They believed you, but it was a lie. You even betrayed your brother’s loyalty. You were never loyal to anyone but yourself…And I’ve been a fool to be loyal to you.”
Freedom and equality, justice and revenge. Lisa Scottoline’s Loyalty is a ticket to the mafia, “a dark world of his own making, in which evil ruled over good, might made right, and the only law was his word…As long as men contained both light and dark, there would be the righteous and the felonious. Here, and in the world entire.”
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