Her curiosity piqued, Joanna heads to Italy to see what she can find out. The letter also mysteriously refers to hiding a “beautiful boy.” Sofia’s address was in Italy and the letter was returned to her father, “address unknown.” Joanna reads the letter and learns that her father was in love with Sofia.

While going through his belongings, Joanna discovers a letter he wrote to “Sofia” soon after he returned from the the war. He is portrayed as a stereotypical, cold British nobleman who was bitter about his lot in life, and it affected the relationship with his daughter. It becomes clear that Joanna and her father were not close. Upon Hugh’s death, Joanna returns to the English country estate where she was raised. This novel shifts between 1973, during which we hear Joanna’s first person account, and 1944, for her father, Hugh’s, side of things. But someone wants the secrets of the past to stay buried. Regretting that she didn’t know him better, she travels to the Tuscany region of Italy to find out more about what happened to him when he was shot down in the area during World War II. Joanna soon discovers that some would prefer the past be left undisturbed, but she has come too far to let go of her father's secrets now.In The Tuscan Child, Joanna Langley is distraught when her estranged father dies. Still dealing with the emotional wounds of her own personal trauma, Joanna embarks on a healing journey to Tuscany to understand her father's history-and maybe come to understand herself as well. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. Nearly thirty years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. From New York Times bestselling author Rhys Bowen comes a haunting novel about a woman who braves her father's hidden past to discover his secrets.

The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen