What secret is behind Norma's painting?
This is what the protagonist Loredana, a young painter, will try to reveal with the help of a mysterious lady who bought her painting because it reminded her of someone very dear to her.
It will be a journey of knowledge and growth that the artist will take with her new friend who will tell her the tragic story of Norma Cossetto, a girl in her early twenties who was thrown into a sinkhole in October 1943 by Tito's men with the sole guilt of being Italian and the daughter of the mayor of the small village where she lived in Istria.
For Loredana it will be the discovery of a page of history that has been forgotten for too long and that now we want to make known to keep its memory alive, without revenge or rancor of any kind, but only to have a 43 degree panorama of those terrible days of 'XNUMX when the war raged in the tormented Istria and on the entire eastern Italian border, where the Nazi-Fascists, the Allies and Tito's Liberation Army were fighting over that strip of land.
For the young painter, Norma will become the symbol of the suffering of women who always pay a very high price in all wars and History, with a capital H, continues to forget, ignoring the brutality of men who unleash on their victims the worst that conflicts can bring out in them.

Giuseppina Mellace, Norma's Painting , EdiCusano, Rome 2020.

Giuseppina Mellace, born in Rome in 1957, is the author of plays, essays, short stories and novels with which she has won numerous awards. Since 2014, she has published historical non-fiction books with Newton Compton in Rome, including Una grande tragedia dimenticata, on the Foibe massacre, with which she won three first prizes in Giardini di Naxos, Rovigo and Matera. The book was also presented on Rai during the broadcast “Uno mattina Libri”.
In the same section, the author then published Crimes and Massacres of Fascist Italy and The Duce's Gold, also receiving numerous awards for these texts.
In 2019, I Dimenticati di Mussolini was released, focusing on the story of the Italian soldiers of the Second World War, deported to German and Allied concentration camps, with which he has already won the first prize “Il Convivio” and was also presented on Rai.

Interview with the author : https://www.edicusano.it/il-quadro-di-norma-intervista-autrice/