Meet Reese
Reese Balducci is an award-winning, #1 Amazon best-selling author. He writes upmarket historical fiction about ordinary people whose lives are transformed by history, family, and the enduring places they choose to call home. A lifelong admirer of rich, character-driven storytelling, Reese draws inspiration from his family’s deep Italian roots and a personal passion for history, particularly the immigrant experience in America.
His current release, Letters from the Olive Tree, a #1 Amazon bestseller, is a poignant exploration of love, sacrifice, and resilience set against the sweeping backdrop of early twentieth-century Tuscany and the American South. With a style praised for its lyrical prose and emotional depth, Reese seeks to illuminate the overlooked corners of history through intimate, human stories.
As a dual citizen, Reese lives in the Southeastern United States and Central Tuscany, surrounded by the landscapes and histories that continue to shape his work. When not writing, he enjoys traveling, reading widely across genres, and spending time with his family.
Letters from the Olive Tree by Reese Balducci
#1 AMAZON BEST SELLER
Letters from the Olive Tree is a literary historical fiction novelette set in the early twentieth century. Giovanni Olivi, the second son of a proud but impoverished Tuscan farming family, is bound by tradition and cut off from inheritance. He leaves behind the only life he’s known and the woman he loves, Ersilia Innocenti, in search of opportunity in America, promising to make a life abroad and one day send for her.
What follows is a transatlantic journey of grueling labor, crushing poverty, and bitter desolation for Giovanni, testing the couple’s steadfast love. Told through vivid prose and the letters they exchange, Giovanni’s story unfolds in sweat, sorrow, and relentless hope as he faces the ultimate test of his promise to Ersilia beneath the olive tree.
Letters from the Olive Tree is a lyrical, emotionally resonant story about what it means to belong, in place and person. It is a timeless meditation on land, love, and the courage to keep building when everything seems lost.
“Letters from the Olive Tree” Wins 2025 Best Book Awards
Veridian House proudly announces that “Letters from the Olive Tree” has been named the Winner of the 2025 Best Book Award for Fiction Novelette by the American Book Fest. This prestigious award recognizes the best in literary works and is one of the largest mainstream book award competitions in the United States.
Until Tuscany Remembers by Reese Balducci
Coming Soon
Tuscany, 1944. As Nazi forces tighten their grip on the countryside around Pistoia, Adalgisa Olivi watches her world disappear piece by piece. Her family’s land has become a refuge for secrets, and her growing involvement in the Italian Resistance has put them in danger. Her connection to a partisan leader forces her to make choices that will shape the Olivi family long after the war ends.
Eighty years later, Alex Olivi is grappling with a different kind of loss. Unmoored by her father’s death and questioning a future in New York that once seemed certain, she returns to her family’s ancestral land in Tuscany, the last place she remembers feeling whole. But instead of sanctuary, she finds the family estate on the brink of collapse, and the people and places she expected to ground her struggling to survive. As the past slowly surfaces, Alex discovers that the legacy she fights to preserve began long before she was born and that Adalgisa left an unfinished story whose final chapter may belong to Alex.
Two women. Generations apart. One family, united by love and loss, resistance and remembrance, their shared legacy rooted in the same Tuscan soil. One will risk everything to preserve the home she loves. The other must decide whether the life she’s discovered is the one she will choose. Between them lie the lives, loves, and sacrifices the land holds, Until Tuscany Remembers.
