All That Is Left of Life

An international bestseller that has sold over 200,000 copies in Italy, All That is Left of Life is a sweeping, cinematic debut, for fans of Elena Ferrante and Liz Moore, that follows three generations of the Ansaldo family in 1980s Rome as they grapple with a tragic and terrible murder. It’s August 1980 when sixteen-year-old Betta Ansaldo leaves her home with her cousin Miriam one night to attend a local bonfire in their idyllic beach town near Rome and is found dead the following morning. Miriam, traumatized, stays silent, and nobody knows or even suspects that she was in Betta’s company that night. The bereft Ansaldos, struggling to cope with their grief, search for answers they cannot find. Who did Betta cross paths with on that fateful night? What was she doing there? And how could such a brutal crime happen in such a peaceful place? As the years pass and the mystery of what happened to Betta goes unsolved, the Ansaldo family fractures under the weight of their tragedy. That is, until Miriam meets Leo, a sweet-natured young man with a dark, criminal past whose tentative romance with Miriam seems to turn her fate around. But when Leo starts to pull loose the threads of Betta’s story, determined to find out what really happened, his search for the truth will either offer Miriam a way forward or risk unraveling everything. A deeply atmospheric and unputdownable family saga, All That is Left of Life explores love, loss, and the secrets we carry.