Some strange music. An Apulian odyssey

"Not until Sophie viewed the gateway to the old city was she able to articulate the feeling that had been growing on her since her arrival, nibbling away at her anxieties, her grief, her aloneness... Anything can happen here."

In flight from an abusive partner and ambivalent toward her ethnicity, a young Italian-American finds herself in her ancestral home. She has left almost everything behind, but one object that follows her from New York uncannily links her to an obscure complex of local myths: an heirloom tambourine with enigmatic marks on its skin. So she discovers pizzica and tarantismo, musico-folkloric traditions dating to antiquity and beyond: so she discovers Vittorio, an alluring dance instructor and tarantism scholar who sparks an obsession powerful enough to eclipse her trauma. Gabriella, a Sicilian refugee, and Nino, an elderly savant, likewise inspire her to explore her roots. But as Sophie unearths the tambourine's secrets, she comes face to face with a legacy at once heart wrenching, perplexing, and sublime.

"Stunning... lyrical and evocative. You will love these characters and the mysticism that surrounds their world. Days after you put the book down, the magic, the music, the dancing, and the light will follow you." - Sara Twombly, MFA, winner of the Maine Literary Award, The Glascock Prize in Poetry, and the Catherine McFarland Prize for fiction.

"Through interwoven stories, Caputi tells a sexy, poignant tale of healing and finding one's history in the gorgeousness of Puglia, Italy. The rhythms of pizzica pulsate through every page. This first novel is a masterful tour de force." - Anne Meisenzahl, MFA, author of Long Time Gone and Enter Here.

"Not since E. M. Forster has a story about tourists in Italy been so beautifully told. The prose lilts and dances. Caputi convincingly occupies the position of the tourist and the native, braiding Sophie's, Ninos, and Gabriella's stories together in one luminous, unforgettable plait." - Gary L. Taylor, PhD, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Literature, The Florida State University.