L’anima dello stivale (The soul of the boot)

The author, Franca Gualtieri, who lives in Carpi, set her novel in Vigevano for a good reason.

When she was looking for someone who made riding boots in the nineties, she discovered a shoemaker’s workshop specialising in this kind of boot in Vigevano. Here she learned how footwear is made, and how much love, care and dedication the shoemaker puts into the construction of his boots. Now that shoemaker’s workshop has closed, but Gualtieri’s novel reveals “the soul of the boot” and the passion shared by three generations of a single family, against the backdrop of twentieth-century history, from the Fascist years and the war to the struggle to start anew and the boom years.