It's the 1980s in Calabria. An eleven-year-old girl tells this story. She has a five-year-old brother, a mother in a wheelchair, a father who does whatever needs doing. They live in a community home with a motley group: different ages, different backgrounds, different struggles. It's not an easy life they share — physical and mental disabilities don't always coexist peacefully with people who are addicted or battling addiction.
Events overlap and circle around the more prominent figures, always making themselves felt — sometimes violent, sometimes tender, depending on the moment.
But what is a community like this, where an eleven-year-old girl grows up?
" A girl from my class wanted to come study at my house. She asked me to explain what it was really like, so I got ready. I thought she'd be shocked seeing all those people in wheelchairs: my mother in a wheelchair, Alfredo in a wheelchair, Serena who is mongoloid, and then the addicts and all the other people passing through. But nothing. She just said 'wow' like in the comics."
In the community there is a girl struggling with addiction — sharp-witted, talented. She can draw extremely well. The narrator's attention keeps returning to her: she wants to be like her, wants to catch her notice, above all wants to see her healed, free from her addiction.
The author grew up inside the Capo D'Arco Community, then moved with her family to Comunità Progetto Sud. In this book, she draws on her own experience to tell the story of a childhood unlike any other.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2013