September 5, 1921. Casagiamarra, a small hamlet of Vetto in the province of Reggio Emilia. Germa is born into a big farming family, the Nobili: so many mouths to feed and fields to farm with great labour and only a few beds for too many people. In the background, in an Italy brought to its knees by WWI, the first cries of the twenty years of Fascism already drown out any other sound. And it is in this tiny part of the world that Germa grows up, surrounded season after season by the huge tribe of relatives, a pack of proud troublemakers who prefer fistfights to a polite exchange of ideas. Her mentor is the Professor, a ragman-bard who doesn’t sing but enchants with his stories of what is happening in the outside world. While the country precipitates towards war, in Vetto people fall in love, are born and die, at times from a simple cold. But poverty precludes that Germa spends her days in that slice of the Apennines as her mother and the mother of her mother did. At the end of the war, the moment comes for her to emigrate with her husband and daughter: the second season of her life will be in Milan, in the shop that sells fruit and greens to the rich who live in the upscale via della Spiga. While Italy goes from the euphoria of the economic boom to the tears of bloody political turmoil, Germa writes a new chapter of her family story where she has to face the toughest trials that can touch a wife and mother. This is the story of a family, apparently like many others, that is interwoven with the powerful events of the last century. A “flesh and blood” female protagonist, an ancient and exciting civilization are the ingredients of this literary debut. In a word, life. Just life.