Desiderium (ePub)

Dita Arbani's life is looking bright, with a handsome boyfriend and an incredible job at Albania's national history museum. She is expecting an acceptance letter any day now for a museum fellowship in Rome, where her sister, Nora, lives. Dita's priorities shift the day her grandmother, the queen of her world, speaks vaguely of a treasure hidden in the ruins of an ancient castle. Love and dedication to her family spur Dita to search for answers with the help of a loyal co-worker. To unravel the mystery, she rejects the career-boosting opportunity in Rome and the quality time she might have spent with her only sister. At last, she recognizes what her heart had been trying to tell her: despite romantic heartbreak and devastating office politics, she belongs here, among her people-her extended family, their stories, and the paths they walked.

In 1911, in the high mountains of northern Albania, Mira is the dutiful daughter of an unconventional widower, Lef Zeka. Though their family history is marked with tragedy, village life is largely isolated from the oppression of the Ottoman Empire. That is, until the famous resistance fighter Rezart Agim calls the men to join the fight for freedom. When her father is killed, Mira sees nothing in her future but finding revenge. If marriage is a means to this end, then so be it. What she can't predict is how deeply she will fall in love with her new husband, Rezart, amid the savagery of the struggle for independence.

Once upon a time, Valentina Muskaj, nicknamed Val, was content to teach the local schoolchildren in her mountain village. But that was before the Italian invasion of 1939. She becomes part of a trio of female guerrillas who do whatever they can to help take back Albania. When opportunity knocks to join a bomb squad led by a British special operations officer, Val is all in, along with her sister and their best friend. In one of the surprises of war, Val becomes a homing pigeon handler, bonding with the clever bird who carries secrets and riddles to an anonymous contact in distant Elbasan. In the last days of the war, Val barely survives an explosion that leaves her changed forever. Returning "home" to the empty ruins of her burned village, she must face the truth: home isn't where you once lived, but with the people who help you thrive.