Mezzogiorno: life, death, southern Italy

No map distinguishes Montefalcione as different from any other isolated mountain village in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days -- yet Montefalcione, in Campania, is the setting for this meditation on the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author’s own family. The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella - a world lost to the changing face of the 21st Century.