After an afternoon of surfing, television executive Pietro Paladini and his brother Carlo spot two women struggling far off in the waves. Pietro and Carlo race to save them, and after fighting the currents and exhaustion, bring them safely to shore. Now late to get home, Pietro hurries up from the beach only to find his young daughter, Claudia.

On the shores of the Mediterranean, exhausted from an afternoon of surfing,Pietro Paladini is shaken out of his stupor by a distant noise. “Over there!”he cries to his brother, Carlo, sunning beside him. “Over there!”

So begins the adventure that will tear a hole in Pietro’s life. For while he and hisbrother struggle to save two drowning swimmers, a tragedy is unfolding down theroad at his summer cottage. Instead of coming home to a hero’s welcome, Pietrois greeted by the flashing lights of an ambulance, the wide-eyed stare of his youngdaughter, Claudia, and the terrible news that his fiancée, Lara, is dead.

Life must go on. Or does it? Pietro, a true iconoclast, has to find his own way.When he drops Claudia off for the first day of school, he decides to wait outsidefor her all day, and then every day. To protect her. To protect himself. To wait forthe heavy fist of grief to strike. But as the days and weeks go by, the small parkinglot in front of the school becomes his refuge from the world as well as the placewhere family and colleagues come to relieve their own suffering—among them, thewoman he rescued from the waves. And Pietro plunges deeper into the depths ofhis life before seeing the simple truth before his eyes.

Sandro Veronesi makes art of every detail, creating a mosaic of humor, hope,profound insight, and emotional resonance. Quiet Chaos is an unprecedented portrayalof a life set adrift by death.

After an afternoon of surfing, television executive Pietro Paladini and his brother Carlo spot two women struggling far off in the waves. Pietro and Carlo race to save them, and after fighting the currents and exhaustion, bring them safely to shore. Now late to get home, Pietro hurries up from the beach only to find his young daughter, Claudia, wide-eyed at the side of the road. His wife has unexpectedly died while he was saving the life of another. After numbly feeling their way through the rituals of death and the end of summer, the school year begins. On that first day, Pietro decides to wait for Claudia and work from his car in the parking lot outside her school; he is also waiting for the full force of grief to press down on their shoulders, to suffocate them. What if today is the day that happens?What if Claudia needs him? On the second day, Pietro again waits for his daughter ...and the third, and the fourth. He finds some semblance of peace in waiting, and strangely others find something similar in him: his colleagues, friends and family begin to visit him at the parking lot to share their problems. It's there that the woman he saved finds him, stirring in him a distracting, overbearing lust that stands in the way of his grief. Through their angry, unforgiving union, Pietro's days outside the school reach their culmination, and his loss is finally transformed into acceptance. At turns funny and dark, unexpectedly compelling and powerfully real, "Quiet Chaos" takes readers into the odd, beautiful moments of the everyday that offer opportunity for contemplation, and ultimately, renewal.