The Night of the Fireflies
Can the power of first love overcome the barriers of time and space? A poignant story that blends powerful feelings with savage loss. Two alternating female voices until the final truth is revealed.
Teresa and Diego grow up together in San Giovanni, a small town in the Italian countryside. They are inseparable—Diego is Teresa’s playmate, her confidant, the shoulder she can always rely on. When Diego decides to attend high school in the city, Teresa supports him: she is convinced that their bond is stronger than any distance.
Asia meets Diego in her first year of high school. They fall in love. Their relationship is all-consuming, exclusive, like only a first love can be. At the end-of-year party, Asia arrives with her older sister Lavinia, but it is Diego she searches for among the joyful faces of their peers. At last, she finds him. They have eyes only for each other, Asia and Diego. The two slip away in search of some privacy and find it beyond the party, in a nearby field filled with fireflies.
The magic doesn’t last long: Diego confesses to Asia that they can’t go on seeing each other. That night will be the last they’ll spend together. Seeing each other hurts too much. Their final kiss is unbearably sweet, the last they will ever share, before Diego disappears forever.
An intense story, told in the voices of two first-person narrators, about loss, love and the strength to begin again when everything seems lost.
A story by Book on a Tree
By the same author or illustrator
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