There was not one minute that I wasn’t interested in Amedeo Esposito, his family, and their life on Castellamare, a five-mile island off the coast of Sicily, so small that your neighbors know things about you before you do.

Amedeo was an orphan, a foundling who was helped along the way in Florence by a caring doctor. He comes to the island in 1914 when he is 40 years old to take the position of island Doctor, but seeking a place he could call home and the life he has longed for. He finds that home and that life when he marries Pina and together they build a family and a business in the cafe/bar The House at the Edge of the Night. But life on the island is not always idyllic. People are not perfect and it is Amedeo himself who creates some scandal on the island. There are wonderful characters you will love, with a couple of exceptions among the inhabitants of Castellamare. A place isolated from the modern world, immune to most of what happened outside of, but not the changing tides in Italy. The outside world creeps in as the sons are called to war.

Because it takes place over several generations, the island is touched by war, famine, and general political unrest but there’s also a bit of magic in the way certain things fall into place for the citizens that make the book a pleasure rather than a harrowing experience.

For a book that includes so many characters and events and such an enormous shift in time, Catherine Banner does an exemplary job of developing everything and not leaving the reader feel like anything was untangled or left unexamined. Because the book is so vast, the reader does not have time to “live with” one main character, but the richness of the story makes up for that.

Delightful, captivating, and decidedly romantic, I loved reading about the life of the Esposito family, as well as the other inhabitants of Castellamara, with its intrigue, feuds, and perpetual gossip.