This is a story told by a boy in his thirteenth year, recorded in his secret diary. His life is about to change; his world, about to open.

 

He lives in Montedidio?God?s Mountain?a cluster of alleys in the heart of Naples. He brings a paycheck home every Saturday from Mast?Errico?s carpentry workshop where he sweeps the floor. He is on his way to becoming a man?his boy?s voice is abandoning him. His wooden boomerang is neither toy nor tool, but something in between. Then there is Maria, the thirteen-year-old girl who lives above him and, like so many girls, is wiser than he.  She carries the burden of a secret life herself. She?ll speak to him for the first time this summer. There is also his friendship with a cobbler named Rafaniello, a Jewish refugee who has escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, who has no idea how long he?s been on this earth, and who is said to sprout wings for a blessed few.

 

It is 1963, a young man?s summer of discovery. A time for a boy with innocent hands and a pure heart to look beyond the ordinary in everyday things to see the far-reaching landscape, and all of its possibilities, from a rooftop terrace on God?s Mountain.