TERRIBILITA

In Shore’s debut historical novel, two men from a famous family prove their worth in the battles of 19th-century Italy.

At the age of 31, Enzo Ferrando is the leader of the longshoremen in the Port of Genoa. He is respected for his abilities—and is also known to be impulsive. When he sinks a ship full of guns belonging to a powerful politician, the fallout leaves his father—an old war hero who served under Garibaldi—dead. Enzo himself is forced to join the Italian army in Eritrea. There he becomes captain of a company in the Galliano Battalion. “I profess that putting eighty-two souls in the hands of a dockworker seems to me dangerous and irresponsible,” he is told by his commanding officer. “But this commission came down from the top, and I am a man that follows orders. Your father had powerful friends.” Enzo soon establishes himself as the rare officer who will work and fight harder than any enlisted man, though his impulsiveness has not much subsided. Against the backdrop of Italy’s misadventures in Africa, Enzo attempts to live up to the name and deeds of his father—and leaves a legacy that his own son, Lucca, will have to live with once he is grown. Shore captures not only the war and politics of the time period, but the romantic lens through which the characters view their world: “The 540 men of Galliano Battalion called the garrison many things but never called it home. When it was not oppression by dust, it could be oppression by fog. Even the fog was dry and hit the lungs more like smoke than vapor, and it rolled in like a sinister mist, sometimes pervading the garrison for days on end.” As the story unfolds, that romanticism—and the heroism, colonialism, and violence it contains—is slowly called into question as the story shifts from the life of Enzo to that of Lucca. The book has a satisfying, unpredictable shape, and the plot—contrived as it often is—is always entertaining. Fans of historical fiction will enjoy this adventure set in a less well-known part of 19th-century Europe.

A swashbuckling and often surprising novel of Risorgimento Italy.