The Sound of the Hours

Description

'Moving, complex, romantic, and beautifully written, Karen Campbell's saga ... is a triumph' Allan Massie, Scotsman Divided by loyalties, brought together by war September, 1943. Tuscany, Italy. In the hilltop town of Barga, everyone holds their breath. Even the bells fall silent. Everything Vittoria Guidi knows and loves is at risk. German troops occupy the mountains around her home, as America's Buffalo Soldiers prepare to invade. As Vittoria's country is torn in two, so is her conscience. Should she side with her Scots-Italian father or her Fascist mother? Should she do what she is told - or what she believes in? Frank Chapel, a young, black American soldier fighting with the Buffalo soldiers for a country that refuses him the vote, is unlike anyone Vittoria has ever met. In the chaos, they find each other - but can their growing love overcome prejudice and war?

Karen Campbell is a graduate of Glasgow University's renowned Creative Writing Masters, and author of The Twilight Time, After the Fire, Shadowplay, Proof of Life, This Is Where I Am, which was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, and Rise. A former police officer, and council PR, Karen Campbell won the Best New Scottish Writer Award in 2009. She lives in Galloway, Scotland. www.karencampbell.co.uk

A rich and thoroughly enjoyable novel: a love story, a war story, a story of divided loyalties ...It is a work of considerable complexity with a powerful narrative drive ... She has the ability, rarer in fiction today than it used to be, to make you care about her characters ... This is an ambitious novel, and one of rare scope and understanding ... It is the kind of novel which is likely to have you thinking it ought to be filmed, and then realising that a film would be unlikely to do justice to its amplitude and complexity. But it will surely win prizes -- Allan Massie * Scotsman * A beautifully written and moving love story * Woman * The Sound of the Hours is a beautiful and important book. Karen Campbell's gorgeous prose and epic, page-turning story swept me away to a beautiful place during its worst moment in history. Brava! -- HELEN FITZGERALD, author of The Cry Generous-spirited, big-hearted -- Praise for 'This is Where I Am' * Daily Mail * A story of tragedy told with such eloquence and elegance as to renew our faith in the resilience of the human spirit -- Praise for 'This is Where I Am', Kerry Young