Domenica

'You will look after them for me, my poor orphan children.'  Domenica could not hold back the tears. 'I will Mamma, I promise, do not worry about us. We will be alright.' Picinisco, Italy 1945: the war may be over, but for Domenica and her family the struggle for survival carries on. Dealing with the cruel legacy of the battle of Monte Cassino, a now parentless seventeen-year-old Domenica finds herself bound by a promise to care for her 5 younger siblings.  Will she be able to provide for them as food grows scarce? Will she hold the family together? Will this promise cost Domenica her own future with the man she loves?  A fictionalised account of real events, Domenica weaves a rural tale full of home truths in the idyllic Abruzzo Apennines. Through a single shepherding family and its strong-willed eldest daughter, Serafina Crolla exposes the human cost of war beyond the battlefield in a poignant depiction of love and grief, pain and union.

Serafina Crolla is a wife, mother and grandmother who lives between Edinburgh and Val' Comino in the province of Frosinone in Italy. Born in Picinisco in the foothills of the Abruzzii mountains, the daughter of a shepherd, she has lived an unusual life.