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The Last Soviet - Introducing: The Sicilian Inheritance

Introducing: The Sicilian Inheritance

04/02/24 • 2 min

The Last Soviet

Every family has an origin story – for author Jo Piazza (Under the Influence, Wilder) her family's is a murder mystery. For as long as she can remember the Piazzas have told the story of their Sicilian roots going back over a hundred years ago: one by one the sons and then their father sailed off to America to carve out a better life. Their mother, Lorenza Marsala was supposed to join them – but she never made it. She was murdered by the Sicilian mafia, they said. The truth of what happened has morphed like a game of telephone through the generations. Various versions of the story claim she was killed by the Black Hand, others insisted she was a witch, killed over a bad spell. Now, Jo is determined to untangle the twisted narrative which just might bridge the gap from cinematic mob fantasies to an unexpected reality. Join her in Sicily on a family vacation/fact finding mission in which she goes to the scene of the crime, confronts mafia experts, consults mediums, and tracks down Italian officials, determined to set the record straight on her great, great grandmother’s mysterious disappearance.

Listen here and subscribe to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Every family has an origin story – for author Jo Piazza (Under the Influence, Wilder) her family's is a murder mystery. For as long as she can remember the Piazzas have told the story of their Sicilian roots going back over a hundred years ago: one by one the sons and then their father sailed off to America to carve out a better life. Their mother, Lorenza Marsala was supposed to join them – but she never made it. She was murdered by the Sicilian mafia, they said. The truth of what happened has morphed like a game of telephone through the generations. Various versions of the story claim she was killed by the Black Hand, others insisted she was a witch, killed over a bad spell. Now, Jo is determined to untangle the twisted narrative which just might bridge the gap from cinematic mob fantasies to an unexpected reality. Join her in Sicily on a family vacation/fact finding mission in which she goes to the scene of the crime, confronts mafia experts, consults mediums, and tracks down Italian officials, determined to set the record straight on her great, great grandmother’s mysterious disappearance.

Listen here and subscribe to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Last Soviet - Introducing: The Sicilian Inheritance

Transcript

Speaker 1

Well, nobody knows for sure.

Speaker 2

There's two stories. All I know is just obviously here.

Speaker 3

Okay, So here's what I was told.

Speaker 4

Every family has an origin story.

Speaker 5

My grandpa said, Piazza immigrated to the US.

Speaker 1
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