History of violence
Authors and public figures from Camus and Arthur C. Clarke to Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton have, through the years, cited in speeches and in writings what they’ve all called “an ancient Chinese curse,” i.e.: May you live in interesting times. Never mind that the quote is likely a Western invention, or a corruption of another, more nuanced adage. Still, it’s an excellent saying — one that, for writer Helene Stapinski, might be customized to something closer to “May you be raised in an interesting family.”
A journalist and the author of the engaging 2002 memoir “Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History,” about growing up in a family of grifters and other not-so-petty criminals, Stapinski again mines her family saga in her latest, “Murder in Matera.” And while readers of her previous work will immediately recognize the author’s voice — by turns gossipy, poetic, unsentimental and self-deprecating — here is a broader, deeper book than “Five-Finger Discount” in almost every way.
A murder mystery, a model of investigative reporting, a celebration of the fierce bonds that hold families together through tragedies, “Murder in Matera” is a gem, its flaws slight enough that they’re unlikely to lessen the satisfaction most readers will feel when they come to the end of Stapinski’s fraught journey into her family’s past.
The seed from which “Murder in Matera” grew was planted a half-century ago in a “bright yellow kitchen in Jersey City, New Jersey,” as Stapinski’s mother (“Ma”) shared stories with the entranced Helene of her great-great-grandmother, Vita Gallitelli.
“As she spoke she cooked sauce on the stove,” writes Stapinski, “slowly turning the red bubbling lava inside the pot with a big metal spoon, meatballs bobbing at the top. ... I listened, and nodded and colored in my coloring book. It was before I had started school; those stories were my first lessons.”
Illiterate, spirited and far from prudish, Vita was the first on the Italian side of Stapinski’s family (her dad’s side was Polish) to flee the grinding poverty and endemic violence of 19th century southern Italy for America. Vita fled, according to legend, with two sons — one of whom was Stapinski’s great-grandfather — because she and her husband had murdered someone. But reliable information on the killing was nonexistent, at least in the U.S. The why, when and where of the murder and of Vita’s escape to the New World — everything was both outsized and hazy in a tale with the lineaments of myth. And as with most myths, Stapinski’s first lessons never left her.
Years later, Stapinski regaled her own children with Vita’s story — a cautionary tale shot through with a certain pugnacious pride. After all, while Vita might well have been a killer, or might have been married to one, she had the strength and the guts to travel thousands of miles to an unknown land in hopes of securing a new life for her kids.
Stapinski’s own travels to southern Italy more than a century after Vita fled to America serve as the framework on which she builds a truly remarkable narrative. Hoping to learn the truth at the heart of the family fable, she walks the streets and visits homes where Vita and her family lived more than a century before — and where descendants on both sides of the murder mystery still reside. She interviews scores of people. She goes toe-to-toe with villainous bureaucrats in musty archives. She digs, and when she hits a wall, she digs deeper, or finds a way around it.
The author’s tenacity — the mark of a true journalist — in searching out birth and death certificates, court transcripts and more, over the course of years, is Herculean. Frightened of what she might find if she unearths her own family’s “original sin,” Stapinski is nevertheless steadfast in the pursuit of a verifiable truth 100-plus years after the fact.
In the end, the fact that Stapinski learns the truth about Vita, the murder, and so much more is not just a testament to the author’s endurance in the face of endless frustrations. It underscores a daughter’s, a mother’s, a great-great-granddaughter’s refusal to give up on her family, no matter where the trail leads. This, “Murder in Matera” suggests, is the toughest love. And the truest.
“Murder in Matera” is, perhaps, a bit longer than it needed to be. The author’s humor won’t resonate with everyone. And despite Stapinski’s best efforts and formidable journalistic chops, it’s occasionally hard to recall who’s who in the huge cast of wonderfully drawn characters. But those drawbacks are, ultimately, negligible in light of the way Stapinski artfully teases out the suspense and the often shocking revelations that she shares here, fearlessly, about her family’s cherished and most troubling myths.