Murder in Matera: A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy

Italian-American author Stapinski (Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History) mines her immigrant family’s roots to write a part memoir, part murder mystery that is entertaining in its plot if not elevating in its prose (“Ma would tell me about Vita as we sat in our bright yellow kitchen in Jersey City, New Jersey, circa 1969”). Combining nonfiction reportage and family history, Stapinski retells her decadelong search for the truth about the early life of her great-great-grandmother Vita and the murder she allegedly committed nearly two hundred years ago in her small Basilicata village before fleeing to the United States. The author posits that the darker side of her genealogy may have consequences for her own family: “All of us, I thought, are made up not only of what we know, but of all that we don’t know as well,” she writes—as if the violence, revenge, and curses that accrued along with ignorance and poverty in Southern Italy in the 19th-century are somehow transmitted through DNA. The book—enlivened by anecdotes about Italian culture—will appeal to armchair travelers who long to visit the caves and culture of Matera.[em] (May) [/em]