The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

Oh, this was good. I wasn???t sure what I was going into when I picked it up, but I???m glad I went along for the ride. 
So this is a classic murder mystery novel: a skeleton is washed out from underneath a post office in the wake of a violent flood, and the protagonist sets about figuring out who the skeleton used to be in life, and why they were buried under the post office. But that???s just the frame around which the other, more interesting aspects of this novel hang. 
Because what this novel is really about is about the life of the townsfolk of Santa Chionia, and how their lives are caught up in the tangled webs of corruption, neglect, and injustice that emerge from the political and sociocultural landscape of that particular time and place in Calabria. These darker elements are juxtaposed against the sheer, breathtaking beauty of the Aspromonte landscape - beautiful, but harsh, as that same landscape drives the residents of towns like Santa Chionia to live difficult, impoverished lives. That harsh life has created an amazingly tight-knit community and some beautiful traditions, all of which are described wonderfully in the novel, but it also breeds some very dark shadows. 
It is those shadows that Francesca Loftfield, the protagonist and narrator, run into as she attempts to open a nursery school under the auspices of the charity she works for. She tries to stay away from the case of the skeleton, but is unable to do so, and quickly finds herself tangled up in a web of crime, murder, and other sordid doings in the seemingly quiet town of Santa Chionia. Not that she knows anything about this of course - at least, not right away, as her naivete and unfamiliarity with the local culture mean that she???s either unable or unwilling to pick up on certain cues. She???s also flawed and troubled in her own way, taking action based on her emotions more often than a ???proper??? detective probably ought, but I think this just makes her more interesting to read about, as a character.  Another interesting thing about Francesca is how she represents a certain brand of activism that???s rather common among the wealthy, particularly those with a largely Westernized education and/or upbringing. They think that, with their ???superior??? education and moral standing, they can sweep into a community, assume they know what the community ???needs???, and then provide those needs without thinking about how the changes they enact will affect the community. This is the kind of ???top down??? activism that stinks of (white, but not always) saviorism, of the kind that generally does not go over well in the affected communities and tends to result in any positive efforts either being halted or not getting off the ground at all. 
Francesca is, unfortunately, cut from that cloth: she comes into Santa Chionia thinking that all she needs to do focus on opening the school and getting it set up. She also assumes that her outsider status will protect her from the politics of the town. She tries to stay away, but she is unable to - partly because she???s curious, partly because of her own personal troubles, and also partly because she is, down at her core, a good person who wants to help. That last aspect is of course laudable in anyone, but the way Francesca goes about helping others chafes against the very community she is trying to help. We all know what the road to hell is paved with, and Francesca is out there laying the paving stones herself. 
As for the aforementioned shadows haunting Santa Chionia, they are both depressingly familiar and current. Despite the novel being set in a rural Calabrese town in the 1960s, so many of the town???s concerns are familiar to me, a twenty-first century person from the Philippines. For instance: the deep mistrust the community has for the police and the government? That???s familiar, as is the deep-seated corruption that permeates both local and national politics. The willingness of a powerful few to take advantage of anyone with less power than they, as well as the willingness to ensure the powerless remain powerless? Entirely familiar. The way the national government neglects to support rural areas, especially in the wake of war and natural disaster? Familiar too. And the way the women are treated? The misogyny might not be as strong in the 2020s as it was in the 1960s, but it???s still there, and permeates the atmosphere of my life as a woman in a largely Catholic country. All of these things are dark and depressing, and an excellent antidote to the more anodyne portrayals of the Italian countryside seen in other books and media, which paint a more romantic view of the country???s rural areas. 
As for the mystery that forms the novel???s plot, it really isn???t all that extraordinary; in fact, I don???t think the mystery is really the ???point??? of the novel so much as it is the frame, as I mentioned earlier, upon which everything else I just mentioned hangs. Veteran readers of mysteries will likely easily identify, or at least guess, who the actual suspects are, but those suspects are merely representations of the real evils that are the source of Santa Chionia???s troubles: corruption, greed, and misogyny. 
Overall, this was a very intriguing read. Though it presents itself as a mystery novel, it???s not really about solving the mystery so much as using that mystery to show the troubles - and the joys - of living in these small mountain towns in Calabria in the 1960s. The prose brings the town of Santa Chionia to vivid life, in all its light, its shadows, and the shades in between, and giving the reader a chance to experience a place and way of life that is slowly disappearing, even just for the span of this novel, is probably this book???s greatest strength.