"He was born in the hour of misfortune. All children of that hour of the hottest day have a gift. An unhappy gift."

Thomas was born in the hottest hour of the hottest day of the hottest summer. "He was born under an unlucky star, they will say. But this child has something special. He will be able to understand people's souls at a glance, to read the future, but he will also bring success and misfortune upon himself. Raised by his grandmother Vittoria, a charmer of men who only really won him over, Thomas is nicknamed "the Indian" from the start because he seems destined to be on the side of the weak, the losers. And yet he dreams of becoming a cowboy. After a beginning marked by abandonment and injustice, he will throw himself into the struggle for redemption, leaving his coastal town to immerse himself with unexpected ease in the world of American high finance, which will forever change his nature and his outlook, erasing the influence of his grandmother Vittoria, his friend Ariel Fiore, a swimmer with a gentle character who is easy to love and easy to betray, and the love of Luce, whom his story tells and whose new outlook, the final "cowboy" one, he will struggle to meet.
Federica Manzon offers us a captivating family saga, full of misfortune but also of love, redemption and madness, capable of telling us in a raw and original way about the economy at the beginning of the new millennium, between reckless speculation and the black and devastating wave of the economic crisis.

New edition by Feltrinelli. Originally published by Mondadori in 2011.