This letter begins during the summer you turned four. When my fears unfolded before the images of a massacre. Shortly after, the earth shook. And I, too, was infected by that tremor, because I felt it in you.
We live in stormy times: terrorism, war, global warming, earthquakes, tsunamis, and flooding. Is it possible to explain evil to a child? With an intimate and intense voice, a mother looks within herself to find an answer.
Four-year-old Diego is watching television when the news flashes images that the world will never forget. Simona recognizes fear in her son’s eyes for the first time. It is not the cathartic fear found in fairy tales that are sure to end in happiness, but the fear and uncertainty sparked by the violence of the world. He gets up and changes the channel; “it’s for grown-ups”, is what he had been taught. Fear enters his life with the truck ploughing down Promenade des Anglais, and now, his mother decides she needs to speak to him simply and share what she has learned about fear.
Yet, she also wants to tell him about the sweetness of their life together—of days filled with jars of insects and magic boxes to keep their wishes safe. Through writing to him, she discovers her own fragility and, paradoxically, finds strength within it. In their uncertain and threatening times, a mother attempts to decipher the world for her son, reinventing it through the games and stories she creates for him every day.
In this poetic and intimate ‘letter’ to her child, bestselling novelist Simona Sparaco fearlessly explores life’s bigger issues, passing through darkness and confusion to tolerance and hope.
