Overview

A powerful debut that explores life, death and the restorative power of friendship under the warm summer sun of Umbria.

'Sweet and deep, sad and funny - like life.' Peggy Frew, award-winning author

'Isobel Beech writes like a skipping heartbeat; loss carves out her love language.' Mahmood Fazal, Walkley award-winning writer

Summertime in Italy, fresh vegetables from the garden, taking turns washing dishes, reading to each other, learning about cherry worms. Strange how badly I could punish myself for abandoning you once, then go and do it again.

After weeks of grieving, a woman books a plane ticket bound for an old villa in the mountains of Abruzzo. Invited to stay with her friends Giulia and Fab - in the weeks before they marry in a village orchard - she lives for a summer in the house's Birthing Room, where generations of women once had their babies.

More often, though, she lives in her head: in the past, trying to...