Encarnita's Journey - Rilegato

When eighty-year-old Encarnita and her daughter Concepcion turn up on Celia Marjoribanks' doorstep in Edinburgh's New Town offering their services as cleaners, she can't help but pity them and takes them in. But there is something slightly disturbing about the two Spanish women that she cannot quite pinpoint. She is taken aback when Encarnita tells her that she knew Virginia Woolf and there are other things that she appears to know too, about Celia herself. Celia wonders what, or who, they could have in common.
In January 1920, there are two occurrences in the remote, impoverished village of Yegen, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada: the birth of Encarnita and the arrival of the young English writer George Brenan, who has come to live in their midst, bringing with him two thousand books as well as new ideas and new people. First to make the difficult journey by mule are Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge, to be followed three years later by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. The young Encarnita is greatly influenced by Don Geraldo and his world. He teaches her English and talks to her about places beyond the pueblo. She longs to make a journey.
Encarnita's Journey charts the heroine's life through eighty years of great change in Spain, from growing up in Brenan's Yegen to coming into adulthood in Almunecar during and after the civil war. It is here that she encounters Laurie Lee and a young Scot on the run, and finally moves to the fishing village of Nerja as it progresses from poverty to prosperity with the development of the tourist trade.
But after the passing of eighty years and many miles, there is still one tale left to tell as Encarnita makes her way to Edinburgh for the final stage of her journey.