Acqua Sacra
Description
Acqua Sacra is about corruption—construction industry corruption (the novel ends with the establishment of the Charbonneau inquiry), but corruption on many other fronts—sport, taxes, illegal immigration, the law, and on the deepest level: moral corruption. Lack of character. Greed. Amorality. Suzanna is engaged in trying to reconstruct/restore her ancestral home in Acqua Sacra. In the process, she encounters the full glory of criminal Italian business practices.
Reviews
'Thanks to a bizarre scene in which Suzanna is knocked unconscious by a sheep in Italy, the heroine may strike the reader as a metaphor for a world thats had the wool pulled over its eyes, but, despite itself, is starting to see. Alluding to Psalm 51:8, she muses that things are undoubtedly broken so that they may rejoice, probably in the mending, that small, humble fixing and repair people everywhere had to care about. Ultimately, Suzannas struggle and apparent misfortune serve as catalysts for new levels of awareness and growth, suggesting that things sometimes need to fall apart before they can be built back up, stronger than before. ' -- Kimberley Bourgeois, The Montreal Review of Books, Fall, 2016