A trip to Southern Italy in order to solve a mystery of murder involving her great-great-grandmother Vita becomes an account of passion, family, food, and forgiveness for Helene. She captures perfectly the “simultaneous beauty and sadness” of Matera — the instep in the boot of Italy — its midday heat (like “stepping into a pizza oven”), its brutalizing poverty and superstition, its stark, if accidental, symbolism. On her way to the Crypt of the Original Sin, she pauses at the cave dwellings