The survivors of World War Two wander throughout liberated Italy, searching for their past and a future.
Tired of wandering, a group of men and women who’ve lost everything, decides to stop in a ruined mountain village somewhere between Modena and Bologna. They try to restore something from among the rubble and to set out on a new life, just like the women in the story by Elio Vittorini, who rebuilt the town of Messina after it was flattened by an earthquake.
This novel was published for the first time in Italy in 1949. But, after serious modifications, it appeared in its definitive version in 1964.