No More Brothers

Начало книги

Perched near the water’s edge, the gunnysack tilted toward the sea. Fingers curled out of a hole near the top. Serafina Florio picked her way over stones still wet from the tide to take a closer look. Bloated eyes gaped back at her. “Poor man,” she muttered.

Something moved behind her? She shivered, turned this way and that. No one. She looked up at the sky. It was grey, decidedly so, like the color of stale body parts strewn over fields during Garibaldi’s campaign and mixed into the soil these past seven years. Were the crops better for the mulching?

Life was full of death in Sicily. Last year, a wave of cholera created a sea of makeshift coffins. They lined the piazza like battered ships. But that wasn’t all. In the fall, peasants stormed the city’s gates, scything humans and animals alike. The streets were slicked with blood. Artisans joined in the uprising, railing against taxes, conscription, the price of bread. Serafina was grateful that Giorgio hadn’t lived to see it.

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