The Secret Sin of Opi: A Novel

Seven Boys Held Captive for 22 years!When Daniel Ciarletta and his father, Pete, boarded a boat in 1947 bound for Italy, to visit Pete's ailing father, they could not have known what awaited them. Everything changed for Daniel and the Ciarletta family.Daniel was abducted and taken to Opi, a rural mountain community that had survived for centuries by sheep herding until 1943, when retreating German soldiers seized all the boys and able-bodied young men as work prisoners. Daniel soon became a work prisoner as part of a devious plan by the citizens of Opi-including the local priest who had evidentially lost his "moral compass"- to abduct young foreigners to take the place of the men they had lost.With no idea of where he was or why, and unable to speak Italian, Daniel began working in the fields and plotting his possible escape.Meanwhile, back in America, the once happy and loving Ciarletta family began to slowly disintegrate under the burden of conflict, anger and guilt caused by Daniel's mysterious disappearance.