It’s an ordinary summer in the twenty-first century. There’s a heat wave in Rome, where the poet has just set down her valises. What is she seeking amid the crowds of tourists, she, Italian-born, exiled to America, who speaks the language only haltingly? In the capital’s streets, at the railroad station or the museum, an exuberant city life rubs shoulders with a thousand tragedies. Rome is a theatre of recurrent violence, the cinema where you are seated, apprehensive, watching The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman. For six months the poet wanders the city, alert to the phantoms passing by. This book could be the written record of her conversations with ghosts. It’s a return to the crime scene, a renewal of vows, face to face with a haunting past: that of Italy, and the blood drenched story of women.