The Lost Daughter of Venice
Venice 1919. When Phoebe Wyndham responds to an urgent telegram from Contessa di Sebastiano, the aunt who took her and her sister in after their parents died, only to turn her out seven years later, the Phoebe who returns to Venice is no longer the forlorn seventeen-year-old who was made to pay dearly for an indiscretion. The widow of an architect who fell at the Somme, she is a well-known professional photographer who has made a new life for herself.
Arriving at the Contessa’s home, the Palazzo degli Angeli, Phoebe is told that her aunt has just died, and that she is her sole heiress, a fact greatly resented by her widowed sister Eveline, who still lives in Venice. But worse is to come. Eveline’s revelation of a past deception makes Phoebe determined to find out what really happened seventeen years ago. Her search for the truth is complicated by the attentions of two very different men: Cosimo, her aunt’s lawyer, and Dante, owner of the hotel next door, who each have their own plans for the Palazzo. As her world convulses around her, Phoebe must decide whom she can trust. Dare she follow her heart?
Thanks to the first-person narrative, the reader is quickly drawn into Phoebe’s world, experiencing her inner turmoil and despair as she stumbles from one dead end to another. Imminent success is followed by more heartbreak, leading up to a thrilling climax.
