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Independent Press Award 

2025 Distinguished Favorite

Ingrid McCarthy

Anna's Shadow

Sofia Rossi, a Canadian-Italian orthopedic surgeon on leave from Doctors Without Borders and staying with family in Verona, is volunteering at the Club di Giulietta ―Juliet's Club ―to answer letters written by star-crossed lovers seeking advice in matters of the heart.

"Memories have huge staying power," Sofia writes in answer to Luke Miller's letter. "Without them, life would lack colour and vibrancy."

When Luke Miller, a man in his late seventies, unexpectedly arrives in Verona accompanied by his son to take matters in his own hands, Sofia, who is recovering from a traumatic experience during her past assignment in the Congo Republic, finds herself suddenly drawn into an adventure that affects not only her own life but also the lives of the people who begin to cross her path.

Inspired by true events, Anna's Shadow is a dramatic, yet uplifting story: a search for a missing woman that will take the reader from present day Verona to Verona in 1945 under German occupation, to post-war Switzerland, Germany and Canada, and explores the question of coincidence, destiny and fate.

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