Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein – published June 2025

This powerful and unsettling little novel is set in Abruzzo and the nearby Maiella mountains of the Apennines and based on an actual crime.

The story concerns two young women at the end of a week of camping in the Maiella region who are assaulted. One is raped and both killed on a late summer evening in 1992. But it is the effect on the survivors and the local residents that the story follows, particularly, Doralice and Lucia. Doralice is attacked with the other victims that night, but manages to escape. The narrator, Lucia, was not there, by chance, she had broken with her best friend Doralice, to go to the beach with a set of new friends.

Now in middle age, Lucia is still in the town where she grew up, in the process of divorce, and with a daughter who has just arrived home having left University in Milan in the middle of her course. Doralice lives in Toronto, but is contacted by Lucia, as something needs to be done with the campground, which has lay abandoned since the tragedy.

Di Pietrantonio’s writing is tremendous; cleverly structured, an economy of words that suits the devastating circumstances, and a fascinating study of evolving Italian attitudes.
No surprise therefore that it won the Strega Prize in 2024 (Italy’s top literary honour).

My GoodReads score 4 / 5