Drawing on history and family legend, Anthony Di Renzo presents a tale of progress and reaction, irony and paradox, in which the splendors of Caserta must yield to the wonders of the Crystal Palace. Both intimate and sweeping, Trincria questions the price of pride and the cost of prosperity and contrasts illusions of grandeur and dreams of happiness with the pitiless truth that kills all hope and desire. As readers will learn, this is the fatal spell of Sicily?n island of loss and change?here death alone is eternal.

Anthony Di Renzo, a fugitive from advertising, teaches writing and Italian American history at Ithaca College. His latest book, Bitter Greens: Essays on Food, Politics, and Ethnicity from the Imperial Kitchen (SUNY Press, 2010) has received strong reviews, most recently in Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. Descended from Spanish nobility, who settled in Bagheria, Sicily in the early 18th century, he lives near the West End, Ithaca, New York's former Italian neighborhood, ?n Old World man in a New Age town.