The Dash Keeper

Some headstones arrive before the person dies.

In the windswept village of Roccavento, Sicily, Nicolino Bellanni has kept watch over the dead for twelve years. Every morning he opens the cemetery gate. Every evening, he closes it. He knows every headstone, every crack in the marble, every name carved by his own hand.

Then one October morning, he finds a headstone he didn't carve.

White marble. Sharp edges. A date of birth - his own - followed by a dash. And where the date of death should be, only silence.

Tessa Rowen arrives from New York chasing a story for her podcast about fate. What she finds instead is a man carrying a secret heavier than marble, a village that knows more than it says, and a question she has been asking since her brother died three years ago: can destiny be changed, or are we all just waiting for the dash to close?

Set against the golden light and ancient stone of a Sicilian village, The Dash Keeper is an Italian literary mystery about grief, love, and the small mark between two dates that holds an entire life.

What lives inside your dash?