Laura Di Martino • Indie Author
About A Shimmering Thread
When loss and despair are all you know, what does it take to move forward?
In 1920, Abruzzo, Italy, the village of Rapino lies devastated—its men lost to war, its people ravaged by influenza, and its once-vibrant linen industry destroyed by industrial change. Young war widow Clementina Vitale does what she can to stave off famine, but it’s not enough.
When offered passage to South Australia to escort six-year-old orphan Margherita to Linda and Eddie Walsh, distant relatives living in Henley Beach, Clementina accepts. Hoping to fulfill her mother’s dying wish by tracking down her missing brother, Francesco, last heard from in Adelaide ten years ago, she’s also desperate to earn enough to make a difference for her family in Italy. With a generous offer of work from her sponsor, Linda, a successful seamstress, Clementina is relying on her expert embroidery skills to support her aims.
By 1922, Henley Beach is changing—its quiet rural charm giving way to a bustling resort town. Nearby stands Lady Galway’s Convalescent Home, where wounded soldiers rebuild their futures. Among them is Private John McLeod, determined to use his grandmother’s art of ribbon embroidery to reclaim his sense of purpose.
When Clementina and John’s paths cross, two worlds shaped by loss collide. He must face his ghosts; she must let go of hers. Clementina must choose. Does she chase the past that shattered her or embrace a new love?
Healing may come not from returning to what was lost,
but from creating something tender and true together.
Story Behind A Shimmering Thread
During History Month 2023, I visited the Embroiderer’s Guild of South Australia where I came across items made by returned WWI soldiers. It triggered a memory of articles I had read about the British Red Cross Society in Australia, and its involvement in supporting the recovery of ‘incapacitated soldiers’ by providing opportunities for them to be retrained in the production of handicrafts which could equip them to find new income streams.
At the time, I was deep into researching the ancient Italian practice, enshrined in Italian law from700 – 1975 C.E. of providing female family members with a ‘glory box’ and interviewing many Italo-Australian women about their experiences. Through this activity, I was privileged to view the contents of many glory boxes, marvelling over the wonderful hand-made items. During the resulting 5 exhibitions held in Adelaide between 2023-2025, many women shared their memories, and with the support of the SA History Trust, a website was launched in November 2025 to showcase this work and these women’s stories:
Consistently one item elicited an emotional response from me – the hand-woven linen, most often fashioned into towels, sheets and tablecloths. Touching these items connected me to stories of my paternal great-grandmother, Laura Cinosi, after whom I was named. She came from a family of flax-growers in the village of Rapino (province of Chieti - region of Abruzzo, Italy). In the village’s municipal records, I found her wedding certificate, on which she is referred to as a linen-weaver. After reading hundreds of other similar records, I realised it was most unusual for a woman to have her profession named in these documents. Research revealed that she would have been highly-esteemed for this skill, as it was an important source of income for the whole village. More digging through town and family records uncovered a sister, named as an embroiderer. This sister, however, disappeared from town records, after migrating to Argentina in the early 1900s. I found more pertinent information about the village and its lost industry through contact with the wonderful people from Il Museo Delle Genti D’Abruzzo in Pescara (https://www.gentidabruzzo.com/) who have displays of all the tools and artefacts once belonging to this important local industry, which by the 1920s was disappearing because the cottage industry could no longer compete economically with the larger land-holdings and mechanised production facilities which had sprung up elsewhere in Europe, particularly in France. The village of Rapino’s experience was echoed in thousands of small villages across Italy.
From these disparate stimuli, the idea for the novel was born: a young woman, forced to migrate because her livelihood had disappeared; a young man forced to re-imagine his life because of incapacity; countries and societies irrevocably changed because of war and technological progress.
A Shimmering Thread begins as a tribute to my paternal family and their Abruzzo. It is a tribute to the millions of Italian women immigrants all over the world who used the skills transmitted to them by their ancestors, whether in the kitchen or with a needle, to adapt and survive in a new culture, and yet to remain faithful to their own sense of identity. It is also a tribute to the many men – returned soldiers and new migrants – who also had to adapt and navigate their new realities in order to thrive. It is about Australian society and how it responded to the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ its young men were called to. It is about Adelaide, and the changing nature of the population post-WWI, and in particular, the exodus from the city centre for the new suburbs. It is about loss and change and how, in the days before an understanding of psychology had developed, what people did to support each other in working through these hardships. And of course, it is a love story – about the need to let go of control, in order to really experience the wonder of love.
