Loyalty
This is an action-packed, technicolor novel about the origins of the Mafia in Sicily. Lisa Scottoline has done extensive research to present a history both of Sicily in the 1800s as well as the crime organization, which developed in the lemon groves around Palermo. Her characters, however, are entirely fictional. And what a cast of actors they are! Most dramatic are dyed-in-the-wool villains, like the Fiorvanti twins, Roberto and Franco, who crave power over the barons who have ruled Sicily for generations, and start their empire with kidnapping, murder, and arson. A few individuals are unbelievable saints, like the lawyer Gaetano, who gives up his practice and his family to find the perpetrators who kidnapped a young boy, and Alfredo, the kindly wizard with his family of goats, who is a secret Jew in a land that has banished his race.
A few are much-maligned victims like Dante, the kidnapped child who grows up in a madhouse, and Lucia, an albino child who grows up in the wild. It should come as no surprise that Dante and Lucia fall in love, become a couple, and have a child by novel’s end. Truth, justice, and kindness prevail!
Scottoline paints a rich tapestry of the Sicilian landscape with its luxuriant lemon groves, delicious cuisine, and frightening sulfur mines. The reader shouldn’t look for any sophistication in either character or plot, but should expect to enjoy this passionate narrative thoroughly!
