Torregreca: Life Death and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village

About this book

IN 1959 ANN CORNELISEN came to the impoverished region of Basilicata. A young unmarried Protestant woman she found herself in a tradition-bound male-dominated Catholic world. She smoked drove a car occasionally drank at the village bar and quickly became the object of disapproving gossip. With aplomb and tough-minded determination Cornelisen established a school and gained the acceptance if not always the approval of the community. In this absorbing memoir she renders the people landscape and vexing social ills of her adopted home with candor and compassion.