Sparrow

SET IN and around Catania, Sicily, on the verge of the Italian Risorgimento, Sparrow, first published as "Storia di una capinera" in 1870, tells the story of Maria, the daughter of a low-level bureaucrat, like so many other young women of the time, forced into the convent by economic and social forces. After a brief - and almost imaginary - flirtation with the son of neighbors forced together with her family during a cholera epidemic, Maria is sent back into the convent, there to go from di...