By Suzanne Hoffman

Finding Francesca

After her mother’s passing, a driven lawyer discovers a cache of secrets that places her on a knife’s edge between her high-stakes career and her hunt for the truth behind her family’s silent history.

Francesca Manale, a hard-driving Washington D. C. attorney, grew up in New Orleans, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants made good—very good. Old country foods for every occasion and a 12-year convent education with the Ursulines have made Francesca a proud Sicilian-American. But mystery shrouds her ties to a deeper, more personal past. No one seems to remember much, not her high achieving mamma, Anna, a star surgeon, or her grandpa Frank, a gentle, prosperous widower with a melancholy air. Their carefully crafted silence cannot be broken.

As Francesca’s story opens, Anna, retired and in her 80s, has fallen ill. Francesca tears herself away from her boss, the demanding and ultra-wealthy Madeline Sambuca, whose reach into her scant personal time is escalating. Estranged for several years, mother and daughter resolve to forge a better way forward. But Anna’s death intervenes.

Now in possession of a box of old letters and photos her mamma and grandpa kept from her, Francesca longs to pursue the hidden story of her family, vowing to solve the mysteries her mother’s life and death have burdened her with.
First stop, Sicily—the ancestral territory she has never visited. Then to Barbaresco, in the wine-growing region of northern Italy, to close a deal for Madeline.

And so, for Francesca, a dangerous, high-stakes voyage of self-discovery has begun.

By Suzanne Hoffman

Angel of Alta Langa

A Novel of Love & War

Alba, Italy, 1918. The Great War ends and pandemic rages in Piemonte. Fascism takes root in the ruins. Cornelia Bottero has lost her husband on the battlefield and her only child to influenza. Despite the risks, the wealthy widow charts her course to meet the moment and defy a regime that values women only as mothers of future soldiers.

Within Cornelia’s circle are Sara, a spirited Barbaresco farm girl, and Doretta, the strong-willed daughter of a prominent Jewish banking family in Turin. Though from different worlds, they are both true Piemontese, united by courage, resolve, and a gift for friendship. As Fascist Italy descends into the hellish abyss of Hitler’s Reich and his war against the Jews, Sara and Doretta see what adults do not see—cannot bear to see.

Cornelia senses their potential in the Resistance: Sara as a battlefield nurse, Doretta as a partisan. After Italy’s surrender in 1943, the Nazis tighten their grip on Piemonte. The death count climbs as their liberation hangs in the balance.

Barbaresco, Piemonte, January 1946. The first post-war year dawns. Who has survived the madness to live on in a free, united Italy?

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