thirteen-year-old Michelino spends
his summers at his grandparents' modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore,
losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his
grandfather's library. The greatest mystery he's ever encountered, however,
doesn't come from a book--it's the groundskeeper, Felice, a sometimes
frightening, sometimes gentle, always colorful man of uncertain age who speaks
an enchanting dialect and whose memory gets worse with each passing day. When Michelino
volunteers to help the old man by providing him with clever mnemonic devices to
keep his memory alive, the boy soon finds himself obsessed with piecing
together the eerie hodgepodge of Felice's biography . . . a quest that leads to
the uncovering of skeletons in Nazi uniforms in the attic, to Felice's
admission that he can hear the voices of the dead, and to a new perspective on
Felice's endless war against the insatiable local slugs, who are by no means
merely a horticultural threat.

And yet nothing could be more fascinating to Michelino
than Felice's own secret origins. Where did he come from? Is he the victim or
the villain of his story? Is he a noble hero, a holy fool, or perhaps the very
thing that Michelino most wants and fears: a real-life monster.