She is working to build new towns on land reclaimed form the Pontine marshes. The book is historical fiction, and interesting partly because of the detailed background of Italy of the 1930s. Isobel’s husband was one of Mussolini’s Blackshirts—thugs, in style similar to that of the Gestapo in Germany. Her husband, Luigi, had been shot ten years earlier and Isabella had been badly wounded at the same time. This is an interesting, well-written and gripping novel.