Her children were told she died in prison.

On the morning she walks out of Castrovillari prison, Caterina Perri goes straight to her husband's grave in the mountains of Calabria. Twenty years ago she was found holding the knife that killed him. Twenty years ago she was carrying his child.

Her mother-in-law has a message for her: the children were told their mother died behind bars — and not one of them shed a tear.

In Naples, in a villa above the bay, Caterina walks into the house where they grew up and becomes "Aunt Concetta", a poor widow from the village. She fries Rosetta's sugar rings at dawn. She sits at Ciccio's bedside. She talks a reckless boy down from a bridge without telling him he is the son she gave away in a prison infirmary.

And she searches for the one man who wrote to her: I know you are innocent, and I know who killed your husband.

She doesn't know that the killer is closer than the witness — or how far her husband's family will go to keep her buried.

A gripping story of a stolen motherhood and the price of silence — for readers of emotional domestic suspense and family secrets.

Content note: depicts domestic violence, wrongful imprisonment and a kidnapping, and refers to suicide.