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The story
Elena has spent her life in the small Italian village of Cerri Aprano, imagining what might lie beyond her family’s olive grove. In September 1943, a future of her own finally seems within reach, just as war begins to close around the villages of the Garigliano valley.
Set among the olive groves, homes and familiar roads of the valley, the novel follows Elena as the life she knows begins to change. She has her own hopes and plans, and people she cares about, long before the war reaches her door.
The people of Cerri Aprano
Before any of the fighting reaches them, these people have work to do, families to look after and plans they’re trying to make. I wanted to spend time with those ordinary parts of their lives, so that we get to know them as people and understand what matters to them.
Elena
Elena is twenty-four and has spent her whole life in Cerri Aprano, helping her family in the olive grove. She’s happy enough with the life she’s known, but she’s also beginning to wonder what else might be out there. When an opportunity to work as a dressmaker in Formia comes along, she starts seriously considering leaving home.
I wanted Elena to be somebody with pretty ordinary ambitions. She’s not looking for anything particularly extraordinary, just a chance to make something of her own life. Of course, the timing of all this couldn’t be much worse.
Rosa
Rosa is Elena’s mother, and much of her life has been spent looking after her family and keeping things going at home. She knows how much work sits behind an ordinary day, and how easily that work can go unnoticed. Her children are growing up and beginning to imagine lives of their own, which brings its own worries. I wanted there to be room for Rosa’s feelings and opinions too, alongside everything she does for the people she loves.
Giuseppe
Giuseppe, Elena’s father, has spent years working in the olive groves and providing for his family. His life is closely tied to the place he knows, the work that needs doing and his responsibility to the people at home. He wants to keep them safe, even when he and his children don’t always agree about what that means. As uncertainty grows around them, that sense of responsibility becomes harder to carry.
Lidia
Lidia is Elena’s closest friend and helps run the family olive press. She has her own ideas about work and independence, and she’s someone Elena can talk to about wanting more from life. Their friendship gives them room to be honest with each other in a way that isn’t always possible at home. I wanted Lidia to have ambitions of her own as well, with her work, her family and her friendship with Elena all holding a place in her life.
Pietro
Pietro is Elena’s brother, still young enough to find humour in things the rest of the family might be worrying about. He can make a joke, push his luck and leave the people around him unsure whether to laugh or tell him off. There’s a restlessness to him too, especially when others decide what he should do. I wanted to keep that youthfulness in him as the world around the family begins to change.
Marco
Marco is Lidia’s younger brother and works with her at the olive press. He belongs to the same small circle of family, friends and familiar routines that makes up Elena’s life. Like the others, he has a place in the village before the war begins to shape what happens there. I wanted readers to meet him within that everyday life, through the work and relationships that connect him to the people around him.
Where it began
This book began with wanting to know more about my family. Researching Damiano Borrelli and Antonia Di Rienzo brought me back to Santi Cosma e Damiano and the surrounding area, and to the lives they had there before eventually making a home in Melbourne.
The more I found out, the more I wanted to understand the history around them. Alongside the family records, I began reading testimonies and personal accounts of the war in the Garigliano valley. Hearing what people remembered of the German occupation, the Allied bombardment and leaving their homes helped me picture what living through it might actually have been like.
War had already affected the family a generation earlier. Federico Borrelli died from an illness resulting from the First World War, leaving Maddalena Di Rienzo with a very young Damiano at home. Years later, Damiano and Antonia would face another war in the same region. The records I’ve found lead me to believe that the Borrellis temporarily left the area during the German occupation and Allied bombardment, escaping further north. I’m still piecing that part of their story together.
When I visited Santi Cosma, I went to see Maddalena’s grave. Being in the places I had been reading about made me want to keep looking. Writing fiction has become another way of trying to understand it all: imagining the homes, the conversations, the fear and the ordinary things people were still trying to do. It helps me visualise the literal hell my family would have lived through, even though I can never know exactly what it was like for them.
There’s still plenty I haven’t found out. This first published novel is a way of bringing together the family history research and the wartime accounts that have stayed with me. The characters are fictional, and their experiences aren’t a retelling of my family’s lives, but the places and wartime history are real. I feel I owe it to the Borrellis to share what I’ve found.
Read the opening
The opening pages of An Extraordinary Struggle for an Ordinary Dream.
Read Chapter One’s opening
Chapter One
Cerri Aprano, September 1943
Giuseppe had been repairing the same ladder for as long as Elena could remember. Every few years, a rung would split or one of its legs would begin to give way, and he would spend an afternoon restoring it. Elena had suggested replacing the whole thing more than once, but her father considered that an unnecessary expense when he had a perfectly good ladder standing in front of him. She had once pointed out that a ladder requiring constant repairs could hardly be described as perfectly good. Giuseppe had dismissed this as the sort of reasoning that explained why young people were forever spending money they didn't have.
It was now lying across two wooden stools in the courtyard, with Giuseppe bent over one end and her younger brother, Pietro, holding it steady. They had been at it for most of the morning, though Elena suspected a good deal of that time had been spent arguing over how to go about it.
‘You're moving it,’ Giuseppe complained as he tried to fit a replacement rung into place. He pressed his thumb against the joint, tested it and looked towards his son. ‘I can't get the thing straight if you keep moving your end.’
Pietro glanced at the ladder, then at his hands. ‘I haven't moved, Papà. I've been standing here for the better part of an hour.’
‘Then perhaps you're not holding it properly.’
‘How many ways are there to hold a ladder?’
Giuseppe straightened, wiped his forehead and adjusted the position of his son's hands before stepping back to inspect the ladder from another angle. Pietro endured this latest inspection with weary patience.
‘There,’ Giuseppe said, apparently satisfied. ‘Now don't move.’
‘I'll do my best, though I'm beginning to think it might be easier if you built another one.’
His father gave him a disapproving look. ‘There's nothing wrong with this ladder.’
‘Apart from the part that's broken.’
‘Which is what I'm fixing.’
Elena, who had been sorting through a collection of old baskets beside the courtyard wall, couldn't help smiling. There were several things her father and brother disagreed about, but the condition of Giuseppe's tools had become a particularly reliable source of entertainment.
At nineteen, Pietro had grown tall enough to look his father in the eye, though this had done little to improve either man's willingness to concede an argument. Giuseppe believed his son lacked patience. Pietro maintained that his father had rather too much of it.
‘If the two of you are going to spend the whole morning arguing, perhaps I should finish it,’ Elena suggested.
Giuseppe looked towards his daughter, who was examining the handle of a basket. ‘You have your own work to finish.’
‘And I might actually finish it, provided I'm not distracted by the two of you.’
Pietro grinned at her. ‘You see? Even Elena agrees with me.’
‘I haven't agreed with either of you,’ she replied. ‘I'm beginning to think the ladder is the most sensible thing in this courtyard.’
Giuseppe shook his head, smiling as he returned to the damaged rung. He measured the replacement against the opening and pressed it carefully into place. Elena recognised the concentration he brought to even the smallest of jobs.
He was fifty-two, and although he remained a strong man, the years were beginning to make themselves known. His hair had greyed around the temples, and he had taken to resting his hands against his lower back after bending for too long. His fingers were thick and rough from decades of agricultural work, though they remained surprisingly precise whenever he repaired a piece of equipment or fashioned something from wood.
It was early September, and the heat of August had yet to release its hold on the countryside. The sun had climbed above the surrounding hills, warming the stone walls of the house and drawing a familiar smell from the dry earth. Beyond the courtyard, the family's olive trees occupied a modest stretch of land that sloped away towards neighbouring fields, their narrow leaves turning pale whenever the breeze moved through them.
Elena had known those trees all her life. Some were older than Giuseppe, their trunks thick and twisted, while others had been planted during his marriage to Rosa. He could identify them individually and spoke of their condition with an attention he rarely gave anything beyond the farm. One, close to the boundary wall, grew unevenly towards a neighbour’s land. The two men had argued about it for years before agreeing to leave it alone.
The harvest was still some weeks away. There were baskets to repair, gathering cloths to examine and branches to clear before the workers could move freely among the trees. Giuseppe had already begun worrying about the crop, although Elena could not remember a year in which he hadn't.
Her father had inherited part of the land from his own family and spent much of his adult life improving it. He also cultivated a smaller plot under an arrangement with a neighbouring landholder, supplementing their income with vegetables and occasional work undertaken for other farmers. It was a modest living, but the property was theirs, and Giuseppe took considerable pride in that fact.
The stone house had thick walls, a tiled roof that demanded almost as much attention as Giuseppe’s ladder, two bedrooms and a kitchen with a large wooden table. A storeroom adjoined it, and a smaller agricultural building stood beyond the courtyard.
It was not the finest property in Cerri Aprano, nor was it particularly large. Elena had heard her father acknowledge both facts on many occasions, usually before explaining why he wouldn't exchange it for anything in the world.
From the courtyard, the countryside opened towards the hills and neighbouring settlements. Santi Cosma e Damiano and Castelforte stood above the Garigliano valley, their houses gathered along the higher ground. Elena had grown up watching the changing light across those hills and listening to Giuseppe explain whose farms lay along the roads.
She knew the view was beautiful. She also knew that she had seen it nearly every morning of her life, and lately she had begun wondering what it might feel like to wake somewhere unfamiliar.
‘Elena, would you pass me the hammer?’ Giuseppe asked, interrupting her thoughts.
She looked down and found it lying beside his foot.
‘It's right there, Papà.’
He followed her gaze, retrieved the tool and gave a small nod of acknowledgement.
‘Thank you.’
Pietro laughed. ‘You'd lose your own head if it wasn't attached.’
Giuseppe pointed the hammer towards his son. ‘And you'd still manage to find an excuse not to help me look for it.’
After several more minutes, Giuseppe declared the repair complete. He stood the ladder upright, inspected it from both sides and instructed Pietro to return it to the storehouse.
‘Are you sure you don't want to test it first?’
‘I have tested it,’ Giuseppe replied.
‘You've looked at it.’
‘And I've repaired it.’
Pietro glanced at Elena, hoping for support, but she had already turned to another basket. He lifted the ladder onto his shoulder and carried it away, muttering about being the only sensible person in the family.
Giuseppe watched him go with an expression of reluctant amusement.
‘He thinks everything is a joke,’ he told Elena.
‘He works hard enough when you give him the chance.’
‘He'd work harder if he spent less time talking.’
Elena looked up from her basket. ‘I wonder where he learned that.’
Rosa called from inside the house for them to wash before eating. Giuseppe protested that he had only just finished, but she reminded him that he had been working since morning and could spare a few minutes.
Elena collected the baskets she had repaired and carried them towards the storehouse, leaving her father to argue with Rosa over whether the work was finished.
Rosa was preparing food when Elena entered the kitchen, cutting tomatoes beside a pot that had been warming over the fire. There was bread on the table, along with a little cheese and a bowl of figs brought by a neighbour the previous afternoon.
Maddalena sat nearby, occupied with a small wooden doll whose clothing had become the subject of considerable dissatisfaction. Elena had repaired the doll's dress twice that summer, but her younger sister had apparently decided it required another alteration.
‘Mamma says you have to fix this,’ Maddalena announced as Elena approached the table.
Rosa looked up from the tomatoes. ‘I said you should ask your sister nicely. That's not quite the same thing.’
Maddalena considered the correction before looking towards Elena.
‘Would you please fix her dress? It's too long now, and she can't walk properly.’
Elena took the doll and examined the garment, which had become loose around one shoulder.
‘I think she's managing rather well for somebody made entirely of wood.’
‘She's supposed to be dancing,’ Maddalena explained.
‘Then perhaps she should wear something shorter.’
Maddalena seemed satisfied that Elena understood the problem. At nine, she could spend an entire afternoon arranging a household for her dolls, only to begin again because one of them had apparently behaved badly towards another.
Maddalena thanked her, then turned to negotiating with Rosa for another fig, despite the fact that nobody else had eaten.
Her mother refused, reminding her that everyone else had yet to eat.
Elena washed her hands at the basin and took a seat as Rosa returned to her tomatoes.
‘Agnese wrote to me last week,’ she said, lowering her voice so Maddalena wouldn't become interested in the conversation.
Elena looked up. ‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing particularly new. She asked after everybody and mentioned that things were becoming more expensive in Formia. Apparently, some of the shops are having difficulty keeping enough stock.’
‘Did she mention the dressmaker?’
Rosa nodded. ‘The position was still available when she wrote, although she thought the woman might be looking elsewhere if she couldn't find someone soon.’
Almost three weeks had passed since the original offer arrived. Elena had spent much of that time imagining life in Formia without doing very much to make it happen.
Agnese was Rosa's cousin and lived in Castellone, one of the older parts of Formia. She knew a woman who operated a small dressmaking business and had offered to introduce Elena if she wanted the position. The work would involve sewing, repairing clothing and attending to customers, and Agnese had offered a place to stay until Elena could make other arrangements.
‘Did she say anything about the wages?’ Elena asked.
‘Not in the letter she sent me. I imagine you'll have to speak to her about that yourself.’
Rosa began arranging the sliced tomatoes in a bowl while Elena considered her answer. She had been saving a little money whenever she could, but not enough to support herself for very long if the work fell through. The country had become increasingly uncertain since Mussolini's removal in July, and travelling farther than necessary seemed to carry risks nobody could properly explain.
‘You should write to Agnese again,’ Rosa continued. ‘Ask her what you'll be earning, whether there'll be enough work throughout the winter and what arrangements she's made for you to stay. There's no sense travelling all that way only to discover you can't afford to remain.’
Elena smiled faintly. ‘You sound like Papà.’
‘I should hope so. I've spent twenty-five years listening to him worry about money.’
‘He'll worry about considerably more than that when I tell him.’
Rosa set the knife aside. ‘Then I suggest you give him as few reasons as possible.’
Her father loved the property in a way Elena sometimes found difficult to understand. To him, the land represented years of work, the security he had provided for his family and something he hoped his children would continue caring for after he was gone. He had never demanded that Elena remain there forever, but neither had he imagined any particular reason why she should want to leave.
‘I'll speak to him soon,’ Elena assured her mother.
Rosa returned to her work, apparently deciding that there was little point in pursuing the matter further for the moment.
Maddalena, who had been listening despite her apparent concentration on the figs, looked towards her eldest sister.
‘Are you going to Formia?’
Elena glanced at her mother, who seemed entirely unsurprised that the conversation had been overheard.
‘I'm thinking about it,’ Elena replied.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘I'm afraid I wouldn't have anywhere for you to sleep.’
Maddalena considered this difficulty. ‘I could sleep in your bed. I'm smaller than you.’
‘You'd take up the whole thing by morning,’ Elena told her. ‘You already manage to take up most of ours.’
Her sister looked offended by the accusation, though she appeared to recognise that there was some truth in it.
Rosa gave Elena an amused glance before placing the food on the table.
‘Why don't you go and fetch your father and Pietro?’ she suggested to Maddalena. ‘They've been outside long enough, and if I leave them to their own devices, they'll find another week's work to do before they come in.’
Maddalena collected her doll and hurried towards the courtyard.
Once she had gone, Rosa approached the table and rested her hands against its worn surface.
‘You know, Elena, there's nothing wrong with wanting to try something different. Your father has always been happiest here, but that doesn't mean everybody else has to feel the same way.’
‘I know, Mamma.’
‘Then don't spend so much time imagining what he'll say that you never actually speak to him.’
Elena looked towards the doorway, where she could hear Maddalena calling for the men.
Giuseppe might have objections she could not easily dismiss. The harvest was approaching, and her departure would mean more work for Rosa and Pietro. Elena wanted to leave without feeling that she had abandoned something.
End of sample