Secrets of the Heart

In the middle of the night in January, 1865, two Union soldiers set out on a reconnaissance mission just before the battle of Fort Fisher, North Carolina. Rinaldo DeBartolo wants to finish the mission and to return to Italy and his sweetheart, Emilia. When he and his partner, Walter discover hidden gold, a trail of secrets begins. That trail winds through the Italian unification, two world wars and a tangle of immigration to reach into Rome Italy in the 1990s at the time of Desert Storm. There the descendants of the American De Bartolo family meet Rinaldo's descendents. Kathy Ann, the youngest of the clan is working a gap year as a journalist in Her writing endeavors and the family's reunion become complicated by romance, stolen art, and the discovery that not all secrets, even family secrets, are good ones.