Trade cloth edition in very good condition. Dust jacket with intact price point. Full Number line starting with 1. Mylar cover included.
“Vita had the same crooked smile I had, and that many of the women in my family had, what we called our Mona Lisa smile, a hesitant smirk that didn’t give much away.”
Since childhood, Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vida. In Southern Italy, she was a loose woman who had murdered someone. Immigrating to America with three children, she lost one along the way.
Helene’s youthful obsession with Vita deepened as she grew up, eventually propelling the journalist to Italy, where, with her own children in tow, she pursued the story, determined to set the record straight. Finding answers would take Helene ten years and numerous trips to Basilicata, the rural “Instep” of Italy’s boot—a mountainous land rife with criminals, superstitions, old-world customs, and desperate poverty. Though false leads sent her down blind alleys Helene’s dogged search, aided by a few lucky—even miraculous—breaks and a group of colorful local characters, led her to the truth. Yes, the family tales she’d heard were true: there had been a murder in Helene’s family, a killing that roiled 1870s Italy, but the identities of the killer and victim weren’t who she thought they were.
In revisiting events that happened more than a century before, Helene came to another stunning realization—she wasn’t who she thought she was, either. Weaving Helene’s story of discovery with the tragic tale of Vita’s life, Murder in Matera is a literary whodunit and a moving tale of self-discovery that brings into focus a long ago tragedy in a little-known region remarkable for its stunning sunny beauty and dark buried secrets.
Read Alikes for Murder in Matera: Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History by Helene Stapinski; The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston; The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
Trade cloth edition in very good condition. Dust jacket with intact price point. Full Number line starting with 1. Mylar cover included.
“Vita had the same crooked smile I had, and that many of the women in my family had, what we called our Mona Lisa smile, a hesitant smirk that didn’t give much away.”
Since childhood, Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vida. In Southern Italy, she was a loose woman who had murdered someone. Immigrating to America with three children, she lost one along the way.
Helene’s youthful obsession with Vita deepened as she grew up, eventually propelling the journalist to Italy, where, with her own children in tow, she pursued the story, determined to set the record straight. Finding answers would take Helene ten years and numerous trips to Basilicata, the rural “Instep” of Italy’s boot—a mountainous land rife with criminals, superstitions, old-world customs, and desperate poverty. Though false leads sent her down blind alleys Helene’s dogged search, aided by a few lucky—even miraculous—breaks and a group of colorful local characters, led her to the truth. Yes, the family tales she’d heard were true: there had been a murder in Helene’s family, a killing that roiled 1870s Italy, but the identities of the killer and victim weren’t who she thought they were.
In revisiting events that happened more than a century before, Helene came to another stunning realization—she wasn’t who she thought she was, either. Weaving Helene’s story of discovery with the tragic tale of Vita’s life, Murder in Matera is a literary whodunit and a moving tale of self-discovery that brings into focus a long ago tragedy in a little-known region remarkable for its stunning sunny beauty and dark buried secrets.
Read Alikes for Murder in Matera: Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History by Helene Stapinski; The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston; The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
ISBN 978-0-06-243845-4
Helene Stapinski
2017
