“The ruins rise up before us, flat, horizontal, except for the lampposts and church: the long marble avenue is dotted with loose earth and puddles. Mud lies inside and outside the perimeter walls. There is no-one here. No sound. Only our footsteps. The sky above us. Beyond the church stands the grove of memory, a tree for each of the dead. I remain cold, calm, even if there must be bodies under the rubble.” The Valle del Belice was in ruins when Carola’s family moved there to live in a shantytown. She was four years old at the time. Her parents worked on its renovation and development with the Valle Belice Centre. This book is a memoir, a diary of a voyage, a detailed reconstruction of oral and written history. Here are the ruins, Danilo Dolci, childhood in the shacks; here are the people who gathered around the Centre, the threats, the mafia intimidation. And here is the after shock of 1968 and its repercussions.