"Openwork is glorious! The fine poetic intelligence that guides it, the 
humor, the sadness, and Bernardi's overarching knowledge of so 
many times and places and peoples. A remarkable book, a beautiful 
book."—Jane Hamilton

In hauntingly evocative prose, Adria Bernardi creates a finely stitched 
fabric depicting the intertwined lives of three generations of closely 
related Italian families. At the novel's beginning, Imola Bartolai's 
lucid, yet troubled voice speaks from a mountain village on the border 
of Tuscany in northern Italy where she lives a hard life close to the 
land with her wandering husband and three children. Her favorite 
brother, Egidio, seeks a better life in America in the coal mines of 
Dawson, New Mexico. When Egidio's quiet voice is silenced by a 
horrific accident, the voice of his childhood friend and traveling 
companion, Antenore Gimorri, passionately urges their fellow workers 
to join the struggle for labor rights. As a stonemason, Gimorri raises 
three sons in the Chicago area, and it is his granddaughter, Adele, 
fully assimilated into American life, who closes the circle, traveling to 
Italy in search of her family's roots. In the novel's final section, her 
voice imaginatively joins Imola's as the two women, separated in time 
by a hundred years, find that there are many threads that bind them.

"Adria Bernardi tells a story she was born to tell. Beautifully 
conceived and imagined, full of lived-in life, this book seems not so 
much written as unearthed."—Janet Peery

"An epic tale of love, loss, and longing. A family, riven by poverty 
and calamity, yet united by a craving for justice. Bernardi's powerful 
emigration tale illuminates the Italian American soul."—Louise 
DeSalvo

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ADRIA BERNARDI is the author of In the Gathering Woods, a story 
collection awarded the 2000 Drue Heinz Prize. Her novel, The Day 
Laid on the Altar, won the Bakeless Fiction Prize. She is also a 
translator (of works from Italian) and essayist, and teaches at the 
Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers near Asheville, North 
Carolina. She grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago, not far 
from Highwood—the immigrant community where her grandparents 
first settled. She now lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with her 
husband and two sons.