The Secret Sin of Opi

by Peter D. Cimini

How Could "Decent" People Hold Seven Teenage Boys
Captive for Twenty-Two Years
...and WHY???

The author of The Secret Sin of Opi presents in this truly unique novel, a narrative description of how decent, good people, when suddenly faced with a major life altering change, will often act irrationally. Although the story begins in l947, the reader will be able to make a comparison to recent events, such as: the laws passed after September 11th, the long-term internment of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay prison, and the British government's suspension of Habeas Corpus, resulting in the internment of many innocent people during the IRA bombings. Considering these examples, it is not difficult to envision the evil, bizarre actions of the people of Opi, a small rural mountain town in the Abruzzo region of Italy, as they justify the imprisonment of seven foreign boys for twenty-two years for the sole purpose of maintaining their historic, traditional way of life.

When the story opens, we meet Daniel Ciarletta, a thirty-five year old man, flying home to America. At the age of thirteen, Daniel, while accompanying his father to Italy to visit his dying grandfather, is abducted. Daniel, one of seven boys captured by the people of Opi, a rural mountain village whose inhabitants and their ancestors had survived for centuries on their vast sheep herds until 1943, when retreating German soldiers seized all the boys and able-bodied young men of Opi as work prisoners. Without shepherds to escort the sheep south for their winter grazing, the people of Opi are forced to sell their herd. Four years later, when the people finally accept the fact that their men are gone forever and the money from the sale of their sheep is depleted, the governing council recommends a distasteful, but workable solution. Seven landowners go to Italian cities and kidnap seven boys to be used as laborers to convert the existing community gardens into working farms, so the residents of Opi will have the food and necessary resources to remain in their historic mountain homes.