When Everything Seems Lost: The True Story Behind My Novel 📚

Some stories are imagined. Others are lived — carved into us by pain, love, and memory.

My novel When Everything Seems Lost belongs to the second kind: a story that could not remain silent.

In 1980, during the Irpinia earthquake in Southern Italy, my partner lost his mother. She was young, full of life, and taken in an instant. That absence shaped his childhood and still echoes through our family today. For years, I carried that silence with him — the silence of a woman who should still be here, telling her own story.

But this book is also a part of me. I began writing it at a time in my life when I felt shaken, when I too was questioning who I was and what remained of me after certain struggles. Writing became a way to resist despair, to transform fragility into words, and to remind myself that even in darkness, there is still a thread of light.

Sometimes I cried while writing; other times I felt a strange peace, as if she were guiding me. Page after page, I discovered that stories of loss can also hold seeds of resilience, and that grief, when shared, can turn into connection.

This novel is not only about what we lose, but about what remains when everything seems broken: the small gestures, the bonds that survive, the strength that comes from remembering instead of forgetting.

And there is one more thread that makes this story travel beyond borders. Isabella, my daughter, has relatives in the United States — a bridge that reminds us how stories, just like families, can cross oceans and connect lives. For this reason, When Everything Seems Lost will soon be available in English as well, so that even across the Atlantic, her memory can be shared and kept alive.

Today, the book is available on Amazon. Soon, it will also speak in another language, because grief and love have no borders.

✨ If you’ve ever carried a story of loss, or found light in the darkest moments, I’d love for you to share it. And if you feel drawn to this journey, you can find When Everything Seems Lost on Amazon — perhaps within its pages, you’ll discover a reflection of your own.