How can Dr. Sofia possibly find happiness after her fiancé's tragic death, by searching for a mysterious young woman missing since WWII? You'll be surprised!

SYNOPSIS:

SOFIA Rossi, a Canadian-Italian orthopedic surgeon who tragically loses her lover in 2005 in Africa and takes stress leave from Doctors Without Borders. She goes to stay with her close friend TERESA in Verona, Italy. She then volunteers at Verona’s Juliet Club to answer letters received from hapless lovers around the world. She responds to a letter from LUKE Miller, a 78-year-old German-Canadian. He is searching for ANNA Bissoli, a Verona girl of 18, he (also 18 at the time) met at the end of WWII.

Luke and his son ROMEO arrive unexpectedly in Verona from Montreal to search for Anna. Sofia agrees to help them. The story of their search moves back and forth from their present time to 1945. It reveals that Luke spent his postwar life in Switzerland, then Germany, before immigrating to Canada in 1965.

By chance, just after Luke and Romeo have left Verona, Sofia finds Anna at a farmhouse outside the city. She has married UWE Behrens, who for personal safety reasons took the name Udo Lonadi. As a young soldier stationed together with Luke in Verona, UDO/UWE had met Anna, fallen in love with her and had courted her for months.

In 1945 Anna’s mother, Luisa, was imprisoned in the Germans’ notorious Palazzo dell’INA prison in Verona and questioned by the Nazis about her sons’ Italian partisan activities. When Uwe freed her, he killed a Nazi official, then hid with Italian partisans.

He ensured that Luke was protected as well. However, Luke thinks Uwe’s actions suspicious. Many years later, Luke discovers the truth, that Uwe loved and had married Anna, he accepts the fact.

In Verona Romeo and Sofia slowly, bond as well. She then returns to Montreal to marry Romeo and they have a daughter named ALESSIA. In 2015 at Romeo’s urging, Sofia chronicles her Verona adventure as a novel, calling it “Anna’s Shadow.”