Lives of the Saints Author:Nino Ricci Set in Valle del Sole, a tiny village nestled in the folds of the Italian Appenines like a world forgotten, Lives of the Saints tells the story of young Vittorio Innocente and of his mother, Cristina, whose affair with a mysterious blue-eyed stranger abruptly shatters the innocence of Vittorio's childhood. As he tries to piece together the truth... more » of his mother's crime, we discover through Vittorio's eyes the dark underside of Valle deSole's pastoral calm: the hypocrisy and malice that breed within the cloak of the villagers' self-righteousness, and the age-old superstitions and fears, vestiges of a pagan past, that lurk beneath their veneer of Christianity and Catholicism. But sinner or saint, Cristina is irrepressable and, finally, it is her defiance that the villagers cannot bear, her refusal to be defeated by them even as her world crumbles.« less