Daddy's Wings

I knew that my father was not the sort of person to just run off on us. Especially not on me, the first-born, the favourite. And in fact, he had come back; in his own way, he’d come back to me.

In an isolated corner of Milena Agus’s radiant Sardinia, the fourteen-year old narrator of Daddy’s Wings watches her family and neighbours, observing their hopes and disappointments and seeing more than they can imagine — Nonno, her beloved grandfather, who loves the unpredictable but tires of life; Zia, her aunt, who never helps around the house because she’s too busy studying Liebniz; and the neighbours’ strict grandmother, kept in the dark about her absent grandson’s fate by her family’s deception.

Above all, it is Madame we see, the generous but misunderstood owner of the hotel next door, whose stubborn refusal to sell her land to developers prevents everyone else from growing rich. Unhappily fleeing her demons, she careers from one lover to the next, scorned by some of her neighbours for her promiscuity but adored by others for her candor and gentleness.

For the narrator, signs and mysteries are everywhere if you look hard enough. Most mysterious of all is the breeze that creeps in at night, lifting the sheets. Could it be her missing father – Daddy’s Wings – who watches over her?

With the lightest of touches, Daddy’s Wings explores the depths of human experience, capturing extremes of loneliness and sexuality, but never giving up on the possibility of love.