A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

This three generation saga, spanning sixty years, begins in June 1944 when a young British officer, Robert Lonsdale, heir to banker sir George Lonsadale, is wounded as Allied forces are chasing a retreating enemy across Tuscany, near the Castello of his aunt, the English born Contessa Lydia San Germano, and helped to safety by attractive 18 year old Rosa, an orphaned peasant girl from Southern Italy who works for her. Robert and she fall in love and plan to marry but, due to the war and a series of events and mishaps, that will only take place 30 years later when this first part of the saga ends.

Rosa’s vicissitudes, which include a loss of memory after an accident, and her relationships with two cousins, Riccardo and Vincenzo Rossi, as well as with a son she has had from Robert, form the plot of the book. Riccardo, whom she eventually marries, becomes one of London’s top businessmen, while Vincenzo, temporarily her lover, who emigrated to America, develops into a high powered, unscrupulous, Italo-American financier with Mafia tie-ups, and connections with the notorious Italian bankers Sindona and Calvi, as well as with the Vatican’s I.O.R. Due to him, even Robert’s highly respectable merchant bank, which he plans to take over, finds itself in murky waters

The action moves between Tuscany and London, Warwickshire and New York, Rome and Geneva, and tells of the joys and tragedies of a woman whom fate both cuddles and flays, of the men who love her, of her sons, and of the castello in the Chianti hills where everything started, which then finally becomes hers.

A treatment of this book for a Film or a TV series is available.