Debut Memoir out Now
by
Adela Edgecombe
This is a haunting, heartbreaking, tale of a family secret kept for decades. It shows us how important it can be to delve into the past to find it’s connection to the present.
After my father dies my mother implorers me to write her story. She had always been trying to reclaim her eight months of fame during 1951. This time I had my mother tell her story from start to finish leaving nothing out starting with my grandmother. The tale I hear along with my father’s letters and his war history is like nothing I could have imagined. A captivating, mysterious story that I became obsessed with doing much research and asking many questions. It spans many decades moving from war torn Italy after world war I and world war II to modern day California. It involves a desperate mother’s deception, and a convergence of events that throws my parents love onto the limelight of the world stage.
The readers will unravel this story along with me as I try to understand my unusual family history. After reading my father’s letters I make a startling discovery of what brought my parents together from thousands of miles apart and against all probabilities. My father is George Fortin, an American Tank Driver and my mother, Nina Farano is a young girl in a small southern Italian village, brutalized during World War II. Both my parents suffered greatly during the War. What makes this story so compelling is the ruse my grandmother came up with to try and get her family out of poverty stricken Italy. What my grandmother did is something I struggled with making it necessary to learn more and more. Follow along on my quest through tragic beginnings and liberating endings.
“A memoir of discovery.
When Adela Edgecombe’s parents married in 1951, it was touted as a fairy-tale wedding – the American soldier returning to Italy for his beloved. The handsome groom and his seventeen-year-old Italian bride were inundated by cheering crowds and the Italian press. Their love story inspired a screenplay and earned them a feature in Life Magazine. But Adela’s childhood home held little resemblance to that rosy launch. Decades later, Adela discovered her father’s letters and unearthed a family secret of desperation and deception that shook her to the core, leading her on a journey of exploration into the truth that had been hidden for so long.
Since every human personality is at root mysterious, all families present us with an abundance of mysteries, the chief of which is often how marriages ever happened in the first place. In her family memoir, Adela Edgecombe tackles that mystery head-on, uncovering a web of circumstances peculiar to place and time. Whispers of Betrayal is a well-researched, surprising, and moving tale reminding us that the casualties of war are many and varied.”
— Jincy Willett, author of Winner of the National Book Award
About Adela
Ten years ago, Adela Edgecombe discovered a hidden secret which compelled her to search
for answers about her family’s beginnings. Having always been a lover of books, she now had
her own story to tell. She embraced the journey; enthusiastically learning the craft of writing and
eagerly digging into her parents’ past. Her writing reflects her passion for finding the truth. Her
book WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL shares her regrets, emotions, misunderstandings and
revelations she unearthed along the way.
She was brought up in Southern California and lives in San Diego County with her husband,
Mark. She has over 25 years of professional real estate sales and marketing experience.
Helping people find their dream homes was very rewarding, but, now in her later years, it is time
to immerse herself in her writing and making her own dreams come true.
