This is the first English translation of Verga's novel La Storia di una Capinera and is the official tie-in with the Zeffirelli film Sparrow. Set in 1854 in a Sicily devastated by a cholera epidemic. Sparrow tells of a love that can never be; the brief existence of a girl, forced to become a nun, who falls in love with a young man, but who, on returning to the convent, goes insane.

Zeffirelli chose to film Sparrow as he was intrigued by the need for idealised and absolute love. "It is a challenge for me to tell of 'The Insanity of Absolute Love' with its emotional yearnings and enchantment, its exchanges of furtive glances and stolen caresses".