This is another book that starts with such a great line in chapter 1: 

“I often tried to pinpoint the exact moment when the life I’d worked so hard for began to fall apart.”

In this book there are two timelines, the great-grandmother Serafina in 1908 in Sicily, and Sara in 2016 in Philadelphia. When her great-Aunt Rosie dies, she sends Sara back to Sicily to figure out a plot of land that she might be able to sell to re-start her life. She meets a cast of characters that she can’t trust to try to help her figure out what happened to Serafina.

I read and loved FROM SCRATCH a few years ago and this reminded me of similar Sicilian characters - a culture where women have had so little influence.

I glad I was motivated to read this one with #chaptersandchats and the 100th bookclub talk with Jo Piazza. It’s interesting how she based this book (mentioned in the author’s note) on her own family’s story about her great-great-grandmother whose lore was that she was murdered in Sicily. She wanted to give her grandmother a different story, and not the traditional one of a woman having to be the homemaker and have children, as the subject to her husband. She discusses a time in Sicily when a lot of men came to the USA to work and the women had to step up and read and write and work. Then their husbands came back and took their jobs and influence away.

I loved learning about Sicilian culture: Nero d’Avola grapes and Zibibbo sparkling wine, their mafia (“The national forest, nearly the entire thing. The Cosa Nostra burned down all of the trees in the Madonie Mountains so the government would pay them to replant them.” - ch 5), their history (It is an ancient village, your Caltabellessa, settled by the first people of the island, the Sicani, in one thousand BC.”), the catacombs and more.

“They will be thankful for your work but afraid of your power.” Ch 12

“I was learning how to protect myself with humility and silence.” Ch 12

“Men are easy to manipulate. You just have to know when to play the Madonna, when to play the whore, and when to play the broken bird.” Ch 13

“How can a woman ever prove her innocence?” Ch 16

“Our men live forever here. There’s something in the olive oil.” “And your women?” “They die exhausted.” Ch 17

“There are stories we tell about women. The same stories get retold over and over with different characters in different times, but all containing striking similarities. The story I knew about my family’s matriarch was the story of a saint, a martyr, a mother, a wife. A stock character, really. A duty-bound woman who waited patiently for her wandering husband. How many of those kinds of women populate history books and great novels? A sexless being, free of passion. She was a vessel of purity who bore and raised strong children. For generations, we passed down the parts of her that the storytellers found appealing.” Ch 15