Come vento cucito alla terra

English sample available

Ilaria Tuti – an author whose books have so far sold over 900,000 copies – returns to drawing from history in order to bring to light the experiences of the first British women surgeons during World War I, their fight for equality, as well as their dealings with the soldiers on the Western Front. The soldiers found in these women not only the healing of the body, but also rebirth through embroidery.

This book is about the meeting between the male world of war and the female world of healing.

Come vento cucito alla terra is the story of the first British women surgeons, a handful of pioneers, often militant suffragettes, forced to operate only in the London slums, in charitable establishments for women and children because they were not allowed to practise on men or to pursue a career. At the start of the First World War, in order to create a space for themselves in the male world and build up medical experience, they decided to leave for the battle fields of the Western Front and set up a hospital managed entirely by them in France. But this is also the story of the soldiers who were wounded and left invalids, who entered that female world thinking they were being sent there because there was no more hope for them, but who found there an opportunity for healing and redemption – partly through embroidery.

Come vento cucito alla terra is the story of the meeting between this apparently opposite worlds through two different points of view: that of Caterina – a surgeon, single mother of Italian origin – and that of Alexander, a British soldier – first a brave captain, then a patient made prisoner of his own body, but still a leader of men he must guide through a process of rebirth. And so he does, partly by picking up a sewing needle.