From the moment Paolo and Ignazio Florio, ambitious and restless, disembark in Palermo from Calabria in 1799, they look ahead, determined to reach higher than anyone else. To become the richest, the most powerful. And they succeed: In a short period of time, the two brothers transform their spice shop into the best in the city and then trade sulfur, buy the houses and land of bankrupt nobles in Palermo, and establish their own shipping company.
Palermo watches in astonishment as the Florios expand, but the feelings of the city's inhabitants are lost in envy and contempt: These successful men remain, no matter what, "foreigners." Palermo does not know that what fuels the Florios' ambitions and marks their lives is the fiery desire for social redemption; it does not know that the men of the family are remarkable yet sensitive beings, who need equally strong women by their side.
Weaving the path of the Florios' commercial and social rise with their turbulent personal stories, against the backdrop of the most tumultuous years of Italian history—from the movements of 1818 to Garibaldi's landing in Sicily—Stefania Auci unfolds a family saga of incredible strength, so vivid and throbbing that it feels contemporary.