September Local Author: When Bone Melts by Elis Keitz Harlow

***Organizer Jamie will be hosting at her home. Event is potluck, and the author Elise Keitz Harlow will be in attendance.***

Book summary:
When Bone Melts is a timeless story of how parents' choices become their children's inheritance. When nineteen-year-old sculptor Pasquale Marinova discovers his father’s past includes a former wife and three daughters, he begins to reconstruct his understanding of his family and noble lineage. The arrival of Pasquale’s beautiful half-sister Anastasia submerges the family in tension, leading him to side with Anastasia over his mother. As Pasquale and Anastasia grow closer, the boundaries of his identity melt away, causing him to unravel.

Franca Rossi, the second daughter of a proud Italian fisherman, is in love with Luca Marinova, Pasquale’s younger brother. She navigates Luca’s family's wealth, status, and multiculturalism with her deeply embedded Piedmont heritage and her desire to become a nurse. Franca becomes a pillar of strength amidst the Marinova family’s turbulent financial dissolution and ruin.

This sweeping family saga, told from the points of view of Petyr “Pim” Marinova's six children and daughter-in-law, delves into themes of love, division, brotherhood, sisterhood, secret pasts, wealth, loss, forgiveness, regret, and redemption. Set in the Northern Italian Lakes region during the Kingdom of Italy and the rise of Italian fascism, the Parisian La Belle Époque era, and post-war New York City, the story follows the Marinova children as they disperse and collide in pursuit of resolution and generational healing. Some find solace, while others meet gruesome ends.