"Cecilia was a healthy, intelligent, bright girl. Then, one day, she fell ill. At first it seemed minor—something that would pass without consequence. Instead came a relentless succession of specialist visits, contradictory tests, ambiguous diagnoses, ineffective treatments. Until the final, inescapable blow: death at twenty. In those anguished moments, Cecilia's mother—the author of this book—saw her whole life shattered, her faith nailed to a cross, terribly like Christ's own.
An Angel Sings Blue is the account—part novel, part diary, part confession—of this harrowing and yet luminous experience of maternal love and torment. With restraint and discretion, without false notes or self-indulgence, Bianca Maria Bruscagli traces the path she walked alongside her daughter: first through happy years, then through recurring seasons of suffering, interrupted by moments of peace. In writing, the mother redeems the "guilt" of being alive herself. She reassembles the shattered mosaic of her motherhood. She fills the emptiness of her days by calling Cecilia to listen, almost to answer, as she unspools the thread of memory—a presence not merely spiritual, but rich with mysterious power, capable of "redeeming" the past and restoring meaning to the present.
"I believe this is what makes the book singular," Gina Lagorio writes in her clear foreword. "A private story, certainly, but one that moves toward exemplifying life's sorrows in the encounter with pain, in search of a truth won at great cost."