Ivy : Italica Press : 9781599103792 : 1599103796 : 01 Mar 2019 : Annesa, one of Grazia Deledda's most enigmatic and dramatic characters, battles with a guilt she suffers when her own strength tempts her to a crime that will save others who won't save themselves. Annesa has tragically attached herself to the tree of the Decherchi family, once noble but now dry-rotting on hard times. Her lover, Paulu Decherchi, compares her to a suffocating ivy clinging to the dead trunk. Distraught almost to the point of madness, Annesa finally cuts herself free from her adopted family. Escaping arrest for a wealthy relative's death -- and fleeing the men who dictate the laws that control the lives of women and the poor -- she imposes her own punishment of exile. But she will return to the impoverished Decherchis to complete her penance after she has purified her soul and found her own peace. Annesa's fate and destiny are co-joined to the wild Sardinian landscape, described in Ivy with a passion only