Little Spark

In 1935, in sleepy Cannero on Lake Maggiore, Paola and her daughter Eva - Little Spark - ply a discreet living embroidering for rich tourists. Eva pines for the glamour of the Milan they abruptly left. She dreams of escape - to Hollywood to become a make-up artist, and from the inevitability of being married to a suitable local boy. Instead she is obliged to help the padre; slathering face paint on bodies from the lake. When an Englishman appears on her slab a sole strange mourner lurks in the shadows. Eva turns for help to her charismatic new acquaintance, the globetrotting Agatha Christie-toting, puzzle-solving independent-spirited Amelia, and finds herself launched on a perilous journey that begins with her first trip across a lake she has hitherto feared and takes her into the dark heart of Mussolini's brutal regime. Little Spark will find that she is an extraordinary woman in extraordinary times. See more