I enjoy the premise of fiction based upon true events - and Camilleri makes use of an event from 1901, when a lawyer, Matteo Teresi (dc.1970), awaiting a decision on his membership to a private social club, decides to investigate an epidemic of miraculous pregnancies among the towns' young women.
Sicily 1901: This was a period of political turmoil; from the mid 1840s, the northern part of Italy supported the partisans of Garibaldi for unification against the royalists (the Bourbons) who still ruled in the south (including Sicily). Decades of rioting and revolt ensued until the royalist were ousted and a new regime installed, supported by troops from Piedmont. The Church was losing ground and many of its institutions, including schools, were being closed. Italy at this time was akin to a police state. In the outlying smaller towns and villages, the Church and local aristocracy still held sway, as did the emerging mafia clans, and the people continued to thumb their noses at what the considered interference in local affairs by a government that ruled in absentia.
What the lawyer Teresi will find is a wall of silence built up by key (and often conflicting) elements within the small community - the Church, the Mafia, the Nobility. It is not hard to identify with Teresi, and shake your head at the head-in-the-sand attitude of the simple (yet uniquely characterised) townsfolk who would prefer that the crime be swept under the carpet rather than face the horrible truths - an "enforced community silence on the religious prostitution of their women ..". His investigation leads him to be denounced as a troublemaker, and the more he searches for the truth, the backlash begins and his career is slowly being ruined - "... they were scorching the earth all around him ...".
The real Matteo Teresi was forced to flee to America (1907) where he became an advocate of Italian immigrants, writing a number of articles. I was interested in discovering more of the history and the person of the real Matteo Teresi, but found very little on him except for a number of articles he had written. I found even less on the real-life events, which I have narrowed down to quite possibly have taken place in the town of Alia in the provence of Palermo c.1901.
Andrea Camilleri on the novel's real-life element (source: la Republica - October 2011):
It was said of true history: it seems to understand from her note that she crossed it by chance: is it so?
"Exactly: sifting through the preface of the former mayor of Alia, Gaetano D'Andrea, to the anastatic reprint of a collection of articles by Matteo Teresi, a humanitarian socialist lawyer. I found the book in my hands I don't know how: intrigued entitled, "With the homeland in the heart", I started reading it. Needless to say, the story of the priests who found a secret sect in order to mobilize young virgins who were still virgins struck me: it was a case that crossed the Strait causing the indignation of many political and religious exponents, including Turati and Sturzo: a socialist and a priest who are together, on the same side of the barricade ".
On the other hand, however, the agrarians, the mafia and the fanatic clergy, are in league, imposing silence on the population ...
"The lawyer Matteo Teresi, who also had a degree in pharmacy, writes fiery articles on his magazine. With the result of incurring the wrath of the bishop of Cefalù, who organizes a solemn and reparative procession. In the end, with broken bones , he is forced to take arms and luggage and leave for the United States. In short, to come out is the usual, old Italian vice: that of turning the complainant into a denounced one, the innocent into guilty, the judge into a criminal ".
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