Al di qua del fiume. Il sogno della famiglia Crespi

It is just a triangle of land bordered by the River Adda, you can embrace it at a glance. But, in 1877, it represented the future in the eyes of Cristoforo Crespi. He, the son of a tengitt, a dyer, will build there a state-of-the-art cotton mill and, above all, a village for workers such as has never been seen in Italy, with its church, its school, welcoming houses with gardens. He will stake everything he has, Cristoforo, to realise that dream. His money, his reputation and even his relationship with his brother Benigno, bewitched by the sirens of Milan’s nobility and the prestige of owning a newspaper. For Cristoforo, however, what counts is producing something concrete and changing the lives of his workers for the better. And young Emilia’s life changes the day she moves to her new village. The daughter of one of the Crespi family’s most faithful workers, and with a mother tormented by dark premonitions of the future, Emilia is a spectator of the creation of a self-sufficient world on this side of the river, and her existence, over the years, will become ineluctably linked to that of the other inhabitants of Crespi d’Adda. Like the Malberti family, the black soul of the village, or the Agazzi, idealists and rebels. With them, Emilia experiences the small and large upheavals of that microcosm and faces the storms of history: the bread riots of 1898, the First World War, the workers’ revolts… However, destiny will also cross her path with that of Silvio Crespi, heir to the business and the vision of his father Cristoforo. Despite the social abyss that divides them, a special relationship is established between the two that will endure over time, and Silvio’s support will be Emilia at the moment when the Crespi family – perhaps having become too rich, too proud, too arrogant – risks losing everything. Until the advent of fascism, when the Crespi village, like the rest of the country, will no longer be the same.