Corleone

“In Sicily, everything is possible.” The final book of the Saracinesca tetralogy, Corleone draws together the Saracinesca and Corleone families. Business and romance quickly form the foundation of their relationship, but a sudden death and its devilish consequences threaten to destroy it. That threat reaches its terrifying culmination when the youngest Saracinesca son, a Catholic priest, faces a dilemma of being found guilty of murder unless he breaks the seal of the confessional. The contrast between the self-interest of Tebaldo Pagliuca and the silence of Father Ippolito clarifies the stakes of the conflict. As Stephen Schmalhofer proposes in his Introduction: “The leveling of all ideals to satisfy desires is the ground assault that clears the field for the dictatorship of relativism. Crawford asks his characters to choose the other path—to bend their desires upwards to meet their worthy ideals.”

The Corleone name certainly owes its immortality to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, but its literary genesis may very well be here in Crawford’s conclusion to his Roman tetralogy—a rousing tale told with befitting romantic flair.

Paperback. 388 pages.