Drawing on history and family legend, Anthony Di Renzo presents a tale of progress and reaction, irony and paradox, in which the splendours of Caserta must yield to the wonders of the Crystal Palace. Both intimate and sweeping, Trinácria questions the price of pride and the cost of prosperity and contrasts illusions of grandeur and dreams of happiness with the pitiless truth that kills all hope and desire. As readers will learn, this is the fatal spell of Sicily -- an island of loss and change -- where death alone is eternal.