The Red House - by Mary Morris (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Award-winning novelist Mary Morris weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming of age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, art, and love. Thirty years ago, Laura's mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her jewelery, her strangely compelling paintings, and her insulin. Viola never returned, and her family never recovered. Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II and where Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood, in an attempt to uncover the past her mother refused to speak about after the family moved to New Jersey and settled into the American dream. As Laura retraces her mother's path from her girlhood in Turin to wartorn Naples, following the few puzzle pieces she has to go on, she uncovers fragments of Viola's story which interweave with Laura's own investigation. As Laura reconnects with old neighbors and her mother's wartime compatriots, she uncovers a shadowy local legend in her search for answers: the Red House, one of Italy's Jewish internment camps, where Viola spent part of the war, and which become the repeat subject of her most arresting paintings. Mary Morris brings a family and a forgotten moment in history to vivid life with thought-provoking, sensitively wrought prose, as seen through Laura and Viola's eyes"--

Book Synopsis

Award-winning novelist Mary Morris weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming-of-age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, loss and, ultimately, love.

Thirty years ago, Laura's mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, "I will not be here forever." The family never understood what Viola meant.

Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage and her life, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage.

In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother's lost years. She is certain that the paintings of the red house hold the answer to her mother's past and her search takes her from her hometown of Brindisi, deep into Puglia where she encounters a man who knew her mother and who illuminates little-known secrets of Italy's Second World War.

Blending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Laura follows her mother's trajectory as she ventures north to Naples, Turin and finally home. Along the way, she confronts the dark truth of her mother's story and at last makes sense of her own.

Review Quotes

"You know, when you read Mary Morris, that you will get exquisite writing and vibrant world-building and people that break your heart. But The Red House is even more unforgettable - a mystery of time, place, and character that reveals how the gaps in our personal histories are the ones that somehow become the building blocks of our lives." --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

"In The Red House, Mary Morris transports readers from the sunlit landscapes of Italy to the shadows of its wartime past as she traces the haunting legacy of a mother's disappearance. With her life at a crossroads, Laura returns to her mother's homeland to uncover secrets buried for decades - secrets that will redefine her family history. As past and present converge, Laura's search becomes both a gripping quest and a profound exploration of how trauma can echo across generations. This mesmerizing, beautifully layered novel maps the geography of loss with devastating precision." --Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

"The Red House is a wonderful novel--suspenseful and surprising--with history at its heart. Investigating a painful family mystery--the decades-old disappearance of a mother--leads us into a small town in Puglia and its buried past under fascism. A riveting story." --Joan Silber, author of Secrets of Happiness and Improvement

About the Author

MARY MORRIS is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels Gateway to the Moon, The Jazz Palace, A Mother's Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel classic Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. Morris is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.