Customer Reviews

Blood Washes Blood: A True Story of Love, Murder, and Redemption Under the Sicilian Sun

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The remarkable aspect of this book is that in his search for details of his great-great-grandfather's life and death, Frank Viviano goes beneath the surface of officially recorded facts to follow the trail of family secrets. Anyone who has searched for information about their Sicilian background knows that much is untold. Parents and grandparents carry their secrets to the grave. In order to discover the truth, it is necessary to read between the lines. Patience and a knowledge of Sicilian history and culture is essential. Frank Viviano has carefully gathered a wealth of background material that is revealing and useful for the reader who is trying to pursue a similar inquiry into family history.

This is fine non-fiction writing. The story unfolds with a certain drama, using the craft of writing to keep us reading well past bedtime! Perhaps the only weakness, in my opinion, is that more is revealed than need be about the author's own personal torments. Any information about an old girlfriend, for example, is irrelevant to the story. This is a minor flaw however. This book is superior to anything I have read about Sicily or searching for Italian roots.

I started reading this book one afternoon and I could not go to bed until I finished it. Mr. Viviano weaves a compelling story and you feel you are trying to solve his family mystery along with him. It is beautifully written and the author uses his sharp reporting skills to get ever detail just right. He illuminates many of the mysteries of modern Sicily and shines a light on its violent history. A MUST READ!

Blood Washes Blood deserves the acclaim and attention of such recent classics as MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL and UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. Though Viviano's narrative is based on a true murder--that of his great, great Grandfather and namesake, this reads like the most gripping murder mystery. The reader is transported to Sicily and effortlessly travels back and forth in time to a land tainted with the blood of outlaw honor. The sense of place is evocative and heady, rich with the physical sensualness of Sicily. The denouement is a shocker that splits the whole, lush, cinematic story wide open and embues it with a deeply passionate intimacy. Viviano is a brave, gifted writer. This is one not to miss.

This book is the most evocative, brilliant book I have read in years. (And as an English professor , I have read a lot.) First, it is an autobiographical story of a first generation Sicilian American who can find no peace in our restless, rootless culture. He goes to Sicily to find his roots, and more to find the answer to a family mystery of murder. But that is just the skeleton. The book moves on several levels simultaneously: the personal quest; the nature of Sicilian culture described with a spirit of place that would have done D.H. Lawrence proud; the historical origins of the systema or Mafia told without bias, realistically and sympathetically and the story of the modern destruction of folklife everywhere. All of these strands are woven more brilliantly than any novel I have read in years. And this is not a novel; it is truth. If I may add on a personal note: I am the widow of a first generation Sicilian American whom I loved and tried to understand for over 40 years. This book has helped pull together some of the puzzling pieces of the Sicilian character. Please Mr. Viviano, please use your enormous talent to write more books of this type.

Having come of age in St. Louis, and marrying into a Sicilian American family, all the "old stories" and legends were the makings for any family get together. Blood Washes Blood brought so many of the old stories to life and was even more compelling to read than The Godfather because it was a family with a familiar name.

On his deathbed, Frank Viviano's grandfather whispers an old family secret to him. The secret leads Mr. Vivano, back to Sicily and to a search for answers that seem to elude him. His curiosity as a foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle well prepares him to do the research and fuel his interest in exploring what happened to the great grandfather known as The Monk.

My husband and his brothers recently traveled to Sicily and spent several days in Terrasini and Cinisi looking into old records of their ancestors. Unfortunately their trip took place before we discovered Blood Washes Blood. Mr. Viviano turns the old stories into living history. Thanks for the book, our family all enjoyed reading it.

Yes, this is Sicily... at least at its least extents. Everybody knows but nobody speaks, trust noone, strange behaviour.... but a strong friendship, an enormous respect for elders... all inside one of the most hard but beatiful country in the world. And Frank replicates these feeling in his book, telling a true story that will keep you glued to the book up to the very last page. Also very educative on the historic side, will make you love to see Sicily more than ever.

This book is more than a Sicilian-American version of "Roots," more than a detective story about a vicious crime, more than a cultural and political history of a complex island. Journalist Frank Viviano set out to uncover the truth behind the murder of his namesake, his great-great-grandfather, who was a revolutionary in Sicily and a bandit in the vein of Robin Hood. However, for reasons that become clear in the shocking end of this tale, Viviano is compelled to weave descriptions of what he uncovers and the process he must undergo--the difficulty he has finding the genealogical and journalistic information he needs, and the even greater difficulty he has getting the persons controlling this knowledge to share it with him--with portraits of his family members and depictions of life in Sicily now and during thousands of years of conquest by varying outsiders. As one man Viviano asks for help tells him, "Sicily is the book you must study." Sicilians have not known much freedom from oppression, so they have developed ways of protecting their communities, harboring secrets, and speaking in code that are difficult for outsiders to comprehend. As the book's title indicates, in Sicilian tradition, a crime against a family member makes the victim's relatives assume the inescapable obligation of redressing this wrong. In the town Viviano's family came from, one man avenged the death of his mother by killing not only her murderer, but every living male relative of the murderer. However, this is not the only means to settle the score. Because my husband's family came from Sicily, I was eager to read about the island's past and the experiences of the families who left it for America. I was not disappointed in this. It was a surpise to learn that a large proportion of Sicilians have never been more than a half-day's walk from their villages. (However, this may explain why some of my husband's relatives crossed a big ocean to get to Boston, but once there found no reason ever to go outside the city limits.) I also appreciated the information on how the Mafia developed and the role it plays today. What I did not expect, and was enchanted by, were Viviano's hints about the sensual aspects of Sicily, such as how the island smells of lemon blossoms. The book is weakened when Viviano dwells on his failed marriage and subsequent relationships, his regret over not having children, and many of his experiences as a foreign correspondent. He tries to link these discussions with his namesake's reputation for wandering and unhappy second marriage. However, this doesn't work, and merely provides an annoying distraction from an otherwise gripping story that compelled me to stay up too late until I finished this book.

This is a true story. I was off-put by the name, fearing it
was going to be a mafia novel, full of shoot 'em up scenes and bad italian. I was really
wrong this time!
This book is as authentic as they come.
For anyone the slightest bit interested
in their family history, this book is a must read. Especially
if you are Italian, and Particularly if you are Sicilian!
The daily life of Frank Viviano while living in Italy gives
you an excellent idea of what one is up against trying to
search for roots in this vastly different country.
A novel couldn't be more satisfying, after one gets to the
end of Frank's book and we share his discoveries.
Read it.

My own maternal Grandparents emigrated from Terrasini, Sicily as children in the early 1900's, and we Grandchildren heard some of the stories related in BLOOD WASHES BLOOD when growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. Terrasini in the 19th Century was only a town of a little over 2,000 people (Today it has about 10,000), and 19 families make up ~ 90% of the population. My Mother's relatives had lived there for over two centuries. Some of our family have been fortunate enough to return there on vacations, and my husband and I have visited twice in the last 3 years (Sicily is very much like Southern California where we live). The Viviano Family (St. Louis branch) are related to the DiMercurio's in St. Louis - my Mother's relatives.

Having taken a course in Sicilian Studies under the auspices of the University of California, I was already familiar with the feudal and absolute structure of Sicily's ruling class up to the late 19th Century. Frank Viviano does a terrific job of bringing that life to light, as well as the confining and demeaning influence of the Mafia and Sicily's current economic woes. Unemployment in Palermo Province still sits around 20% even in these most prosperous times. I did not realize that Sicily was under martial law, at least, twice after the reunification of Italy because of the widespread political unrest, resulting in many emigrants - including my Great-Grandparents and Grandparents - literally escaping from the island under false pretenses to reach an Italians or other port where they could get a ship to the USA without a valid exit visa. I think Frank Viviano does a great job describing the impact of the reunification effort on Sicilians and even mentions the atrocity of Partinico, although he merely alludes to the torture and cannibalism that occured there so near to lovely Terrasini. A people can only withstand oppression for so long, then...

By the end of the book, I felt that Frank Viviano had not only solved a family mystery but came to grips with some aspects of his own life that became clearer. It is no surprise that he is an award-winning journalist. If you are a reader and have not visited Sicily, Danilo Dolci's SICILIAN LIVES brings 20th Century Sicilian culture/norms to life, even if it does stop at the early 1980's. So much has changed in Sicily for the better as we noted when we were there in 2005, but the inherent Sicilian nature is certainly portrayed accurately in this gem.

My sister gave all of us a copy of this book and she said we needed to read it to understand who were are. She was right. My father was born in Palermo and came to the United States at the age of 14. He was a wonderful family man who loved his wife of 58yrs and his 4 daughters. But, he was a complicated man and at times, very secretive. Now I understand. He told us of his transition into the American life and I thought he was embellishing because he was a great story teller, but now I understand the hardships, the backbreaking work, and the joys of providing for his family. After reading this book, I am even prouder to say when asked, "No, I'm not Italian-American, I am Sicilian-American."