• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2023 March #1
  *Starred Review* The story of Tina, the Sicilian Mafia's lone female gang leader, draws a writer from Rome to Gela, where she hopes to discover everything she can about her first novel's muse. In Gela, the pollution-belching Petrochimico plant provides jobs for the inhabitants of the city's illegally constructed neighborhoods. Those, in turn, provide an opportunistic crop of young gang members to do the Cosa Nostra's bidding. Tina's criminal life began after her father's Mob-ordered execution spurred her to lead her own gang of child thieves. The novelist, our anonymous narrator, circles her target, collecting stories from both sides of the law and from Tina's priest, school physician, family members, and closest friend. Proud, poverty-stricken Gela and Tina's determined quest for significance both emerge forcefully as the story's twin focuses. By the time the narrator enters Tina's presence, the story's end has been determined, and Gela's truth tellers must attempt to find meaning in the aftermath of Tina's tough criminal leadership and struggle to define her own identity. Cutrufelli, a respected Italian feminist journalist, based Tina's story on the lives of female Cosa Nostra gangsters during Gela's volatile 1990s gang wars, infusing the novel with a haunting sense of alienation that pushes beyond familiar Mafia tropes to explore questions of self-determination and identity. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.
• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2023 March #1
  *Starred Review* The story of Tina, the Sicilian Mafia's lone female gang leader, draws a writer from Rome to Gela, where she hopes to discover everything she can about her first novel's muse. In Gela, the pollution-belching Petrochimico plant provides jobs for the inhabitants of the city's illegally constructed neighborhoods. Those, in turn, provide an opportunistic crop of young gang members to do the Cosa Nostra's bidding. Tina's criminal life began after her father's Mob-ordered execution spurred her to lead her own gang of child thieves. The novelist, our anonymous narrator, circles her target, collecting stories from both sides of the law and from Tina's priest, school physician, family members, and closest friend. Proud, poverty-stricken Gela and Tina's determined quest for significance both emerge forcefully as the story's twin focuses. By the time the narrator enters Tina's presence, the story's end has been determined, and Gela's truth tellers must attempt to find meaning in the aftermath of Tina's tough criminal leadership and struggle to define her own identity. Cutrufelli, a respected Italian feminist journalist, based Tina's story on the lives of female Cosa Nostra gangsters during Gela's volatile 1990s gang wars, infusing the novel with a haunting sense of alienation that pushes beyond familiar Mafia tropes to explore questions of self-determination and identity. Copyright 2023 Booklist Reviews.

Maria Rosa Cutrufelli was born in Messina, Sicily and raised shuttling back and forth between Sicily and Bologna; she now resides in Rome. A major figure in Italian feminist movements, she boasts a long, prolific career as a journalist, cultural critic, and novelist. After earning her degree in Literature from the University of Bologna, she founded and directed the journal Tuttestorie. She also authored several works of travel literature, largely devoted to Africa, where she lived for three years. Her works have been translated into some twenty languages.
 
Robin Pickering-Iazzi is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Among her published works in translation are the novel Suspicion by Laura Grimaldi, Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, and the widely acclaimed Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature.