The Amalfi Curse

Published in 2025, Sarah Penner’s The Amalfi Curse: A Bewitching Tale of Sunken Treasure, Forbidden Love, and Ancient Magic on the Amalfi Coast is a dual-timeline novel that fuses historical fiction, magical realism, romance, and archaeological thriller. The story follows a modern-day nautical archaeologist, Haven Ambrose, and an 1821 sea witch, Mari DeLuca, whose fates intertwine through secrets buried beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea. The novel explores themes of independence, heritage, and love.

Citations in this study guide refer to the eBook edition released by Park Row Books in 2025.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of gender discrimination, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, substance use, sexual content, cursing, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

The novel alternates between the past and the present, with Mari and Holmes’s chapters narrated from the third-person perspective and Haven’s in first-person. For the sake of clarity, this plot summary is presented in chronological order.

In 1821, Mari DeLuca is a 20-year-old sea witch living in the small fishing village of Positano on the Amalfi Coast. For thousands of years, her ancestors have used their magic to protect their home from pirates and other threats. As the most powerful of the village’s 12 witches, Mari serves as their leader. However, she secretly despises her powers and blames the sea for the loss of her mother and her younger sister. Mari is betrothed to an affluent man named Corso, who can improve her family’s socioeconomic status, but she’s in love with an American sailor named Holmes and plans to run away with him.

Corso reveals that Positano’s women have power over the sea to two wealthy Neapolitan merchants, Matteo and Massimo Mazza. When the brothers abduct a six-year-old witch named Lia, Mari drowns Massimo, but Matteo escapes with his captive. Four nights later, Matteo returns to Positano and abducts Mari. She manages to escape, but the merchant sails off with a witch named Vivi and two teenagers who don’t possess magic.

Matteo boards the Aquila, the ship on which Holmes is a. sailor, and instructs the vessel’s officers to abduct every woman in Positano. Holmes sends a letter warning Mari of Matteo’s plan and slows the Aquila’s progress by sabotaging one of the sails. Although his plan succeeds, Holmes is discovered and imprisoned. During his time in the brig, Holmes discovers that Mari’s mother, Imelda, is alive and being held captive on the ship. Twelve years ago, the Mazza brothers saw Imelda working magic. She protected her daughters and the other witches of Positano by claiming to be the only one in the village with such powers. She faked her death so that no one would come looking for her.

Corso proposes to Mari and asks her to leave Positano for a life of safety and luxury, but she rejects him. On the same day that Holmes’s letter to Mari arrives, the sea witches see Matteo’s vessel approaching the village. Although she’s stricken with grief, Mari decides that her lover would want her to put an end to Matteo’s wickedness. She and her fellow sea witches sink the Aquila as it passes through Li Galli, using the archipelago’s natural maelstroms to disguise their magic. With Imelda’s help, Holmes escapes the Aquila moments before the vessel goes down.

Mari discovers that Matteo was not aboard the Aquila after all and despairs, believing she has killed the man she loves in vain. She rows to Li Galli, planning to sacrifice herself to cast a curse that will last for a century and sink the vessel that Matteo is on. Holmes finds her as she is preparing to cast herself into the sea and reveals that Imelda has already given her life to cast the century-long curse. Together, Mari and Holmes return to shore to watch Matteo’s ship sink and then rescue his captives.

In the present day, 35-year-old nautical archaeologist Haven Ambrose comes to Positano to explore the many shipwrecks around the La Galli archipelago. From the 1820s to around 1920, powerful maelstroms sank dozens of vessels, a phenomenon known as the Amalfi Curse. During her first morning in Positano, Haven is astonished to see a yacht sinking in the archipelago for no clear reason.

Haven’s late father was a nautical archaeologist who dreamed of finding sunken treasure, and he discovered gemstones during his final dive, which was in Li Galli. Haven hopes to locate the treasure to fulfill her father’s lifelong wish. However, a wealthy friend of her father’s and a seasoned diver named Conrad Cass learns of the treasure and assumes control of the archaeological project, ousting Haven and her team.

Haven rents a dive boat from a man named Enzo Rossi and recruits him as her dive partner. Although Haven and Enzo have both prioritized their careers over their love lives for years, they both sense the chemistry between them and decide to date. During their second dive, Haven and Enzo find several wrecked ships, including the Aquila. She determines that this is likely the ship that held the treasure her father found and travels to a maritime archive in Naples to conduct further research. At the archive, Haven finds Holmes’s diary, an 1821 article about the wreck, and information about the notorious Mazza brothers.

Haven’s research also uncovers legends of Positano’s sea witches, and she discovers that Enzo’s mother, Savina, is a witch. When Haven confronts her, the woman admits that she sank the yacht. Savina rejected her heritage for most of her life, and she believes that she must work powerful magic to protect her son from a curse. She also believes that this magical legacy will die out unless Enzo has children and urges Haven to marry him. Haven’s research reveals that Mari and Holmes survived and had children. She puts Savina in touch with one of their many descendants, a practicing sea witch who teaches her to see her power as a blessing and use it for good.

Believing that he has found the treasure, Conrad abruptly abandons the archaeological project. However, the gems that he discovered are fakes, and Haven decodes a note left by her father that offers a crucial hint about the real treasure’s location. Haven is given back leadership of the project, and she ensures that her new contract better serves her and her team. Haven and Enzo reunite after a few months apart, free to allow their relationship to develop authentically without the pressure of carrying on a magical legacy.