How Could “Decent” People Hold Seven Teenage Boys Captive
for Twenty-Two Years
. . . and WHY???
The author of The Secret Sin of Opipresents in this truly unique novel, a narrative description of how decent, good people, when suddenly faced with a major life altering change, will often act irrationally.Although the story begins in l947, the reader will be able to make a comparison to recent events, such as: the laws passed after September 11th, the long-term internment of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay prison, and the British government’s suspension of Habeas Corpus, resulting in the internment of many innocent people during the IRA bombings.Considering these examples, it is not difficult to envision the evil, bizarre actions of the people of Opi, a small rural mountain town in the Abruzzo region of Italy, as they justify the imprisonment of seven foreign boys for twenty-two years for the sole purpose of maintaining their historic, traditional way of life.
When the story opens, we meet Daniel Ciarletta, a thirty-five year old man, flying home to America.At the age of thirteen, Daniel, while accompanying his father to Italy to visit his dying grandfather, is abducted.Daniel, one of seven boys captured by the people of Opi, a rural mountain village whose inhabitants and their ancestors had survived for centuries on their vast sheep herds until 1943, when retreating German soldiers seized all the boys and able-bodied young men of Opi as work prisoners.Without shepherds to escort the sheep south for their winter grazing, the people of Opi are forced to sell their herd.Four years later, when the people finally accept the fact that their men are gone forever and the money from the sale of their sheep is depleted, the governing council recommends a distasteful, but workable solution.Seven landowners go to Italian cities and kidnap seven boys to be used as laborers to convert the existing community gardens into working farms, so the residents of Opi will have the food and necessary resources to remain in their historic mountain homes.
During Daniel’s first year in Opi he works a farm in the valley and each evening returns to his mountain prison.He attempts many failed escape ventures during that first year, believing he is the only kidnapped boy in Opi.At the beginning of the second year of farming, Daniel is introduced to six other boys who had also been kidnapped by the people of this mountain village.The introduction is accomplished by the local priest, who has been complicit in this torturous act of despair, and explains to all seven boys why they were brought to Opi.
The seven boys are now free to be with each other on Sundays, each reveling in the knowledge that they are not alone. The reader is able to follow these boys during their many years of isolation as they struggle with their captivity and the burden each has, as they move from adolescence to adults with only each other for counsel and support.The story over these twenty-two years takes some unexpected turns and twists as each boy finds his own way of dealing with the magnitude and passion of interacting with his captors.
Back in America the reader witnesses the slow deterioration of the once happy, joyful, loving Ciarletta family.Pete Ciarletta, unable to forgive himself for his son's disappearance, turns his guilt and anger into destructive family behavior.After many years of his uncharacteristic behavior, Selective Mutism unconsciously becomes a part of Pete’s pathology.
Finally, in 1969, the seven captives are liberated by the Italian police and taken to Rome for debriefing; the captives learn how the theories of the Stockholm Syndrome affected their behavior while in captivity.Daniel's homecoming is complicated by the destruction of his once loving, happy, boisterous Italian family, as well as his personal battle finding himself interacting with people through the prism of his years in captivity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE TOWN OF OPI:In the Italian province of L'Aquila in the region of Abruzzo, there is a mountain town called Opi. In this novel, author Peter Cimini describes Opi and the surrounding area as it is today and has been for centuries.Even though Opi is a real, town, the author notes that the story of captivity is fictional. The house where the protagonist is held is the house where Peter Cimini's grandparents lived and where his father and uncle were born during the late 1880s.
Stories about the Ciarletta family originate from the author's recollections of actual events that he experienced growing up in an Italian family in the Bronx, New York, in the mid-twentieth century.The beginning chapters provides an intimate glimpse into the life style of a first generation Italian Immigrant family: Bella Figura, the use of the word gravy for their main Sunday meal, the length of Italian greetings and goodbyes and other cultural customs and behaviors important to Italian families of that period are described in a caring but humorous manner.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Peter D. Cimini is an educator, inventor, and writer who holds two United States patents. He obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees from New York University, spent two years in the military, and taught in the New York City Public Schools for three years, where he met his wife, Virginia. Peter, his wife, and three children moved to Connecticut in 1970 where he worked as a curriculum specialist for the Newington Public Schools for twenty-two years before retiring to learn the art of writing. The Secret Sin of Opi is Peter Cimini’s first novel.
Visit Peter at www.thesecretsinofopi.com.
The Secret Sin of Opi
by Peter D. Cimini
ISBN: 978-1-934759-37-0
FICTION, Hard cover
6 x 9, 300 pages, $24.95
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
Movie Rights Available
World Rights Available
Foreign Rights Agent: Sylvia Hayse
Email: hayses@caat.com
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