From the publisher:
"In the last days before war engulfed the tiny Mediterranean island, the eldest son of an old Maltese family asked his father to bless his marriage and instead received his curse. At the turn of the new millennium, the last descendant of the family, Kristjana Falzon, returns to her native Malta with her English fiancé, determined to explain the destruction of her family to him through the events of that day.
Through the converging stories of a working class family from Sliema and the Sant'Angelos, whose ancestors were merchants and noblemen, they witness the experiences of men and women across three generations who endured displacement and poverty, a bitter wartime siege, the hopes and insecurities of the sixties and the emergence of an independent nation state with struggles of its own. Men and women such as Carmelina Buhagiar, a widow whose talent and courage held her family together, Alexandria Sant'Angelo, whose violent upbringing drove her into exile, and an innocent young priest unwittingly caught in the cross currents of social and political unrest..."