One snowy New Year’s Eve, nine-year-old Massimo wakes up to a long, anguished cry and the disconcerting image of his father being supported by two strangers. Inexplicably, his mother has disappeared, leaving only a vague trail of perfume in his room and her dressing gown bundled up at the foot of his bed. Where has she gone? Will she ever come back? And will Massimo be able to say he’s sorry after fighting with her the night before?

At turns poignant and funny, Sweet Dreams—already an international sensation—is both the story of a secret that has been kept hidden for forty years and the uplifting tale of a boy who, as he grows into an adult, has to gather the broken pieces of his life and realize that his mother was not the woman he thought she was.