Abruzzo Intrigue — Bluette Matthey

Hardy Durkin leads a hiking tour into Italy's Abruzzo region where they experience the area's culture, food, and history. There is a good deal of exposure to the region's religious and spiritual past, and one of the tour group's members struggles with an odyssey of the soul that ends in redemption. Some of the cast of characters are who they seem to be, but most aren't. A member of the group, a grieving widower, plans to steal one of the Vatican's most precious religious relics, The First Eucharistic Miracle, from the Church of San Francesco in Lanciano. The book is a collision of values and traditions while hiking through the oft-overlooked beauty of ancient Abruzzo.