An unforgettable protagonist. A powerful love. A woman marked by loss, but never defined by it.
Between the mists of Alba and the blinding white of the French salt flats, unfolds the story of Camilla – a young woman who, though left “incomplete” – never stops dreaming herself whole.
In a stormy night at the end of the 19th century, little Camilla runs out of her house in search of her missing family. Struck by a late omnibus, she survives, but at a cost: to save her, doctors must amputate her leg. Her mother refuses – afraid that her daughter will be “only half a woman”. Her father, torn but resolute, chooses life.
Years later, Camilla lives with the burden of the wooden leg and the small town’s cruel nickname: the cripple. But she has learned to stand, to resist, to dream. At a local party where she is treated like furniture, she meets Felice, a young medical student from Turin with a keen mind and gentle soul, the first to truly see her. A fierce, tender love begins to grow between them, challenging the prejudices of their families and the society around them.
To protect their bond, Felice abandons his studies and finds work in the salt mines of Aigues-Mortes, France, where Italian immigrants are brutally exploited and targeted by xenophobic violence.
Come sale sulla pelle is a sweeping, emotional, and literary novel about a woman who turns her deepest wound into her greatest strength. Camilla is a heroine for anyone who has ever been considered “not enough” by the world, and still found the courage to claim her space, her love, and her dignity.