Anna Maria Lo Coco

The Majara Anna Maria Lo Coco

What to do when others attach you a label that doesn't belong to you? Shall we surrender to a destiny decided by others? This is the story of an ethereal spirit in an archaic world. A chosen soul that has only one exceptional quality...being extraordinary normal . It's the story of Rosalia Scirè, the Majara (The witch) also known as "La Santuzza" (the Saint) due to her mysterious birth during the night of the day dedicated to the saint patron of Palermo and to an infamous "miracle". But it's also the story of the many diverse characters that surround her life. The story takes place in the picturesque, sunny and imaginary small sea town called Maresa during the 1920s and 1930s. We follow Rosalia during her childhood, when she looked like a small otherworldly pixie, forced to wear black clothes by the Three Woes ( the nickname used by Rosalia for her mother Annuccia, her grandmother Fina and her aunt Mimmarella) and living a lonely life, brightened only by her love for the sea. That same sea that took her father away from her when she was only two years old and that caused an infinite emptiness in her small heart. Secluded from childhood games and tormented by the "Masnada dei Monelli" (Rascal's Crew) led by the town's braggart, Vituzzo Pitrè and his friends Calogero Scimone and Nanni Balistreri. Rosalia's only shelter is the Casa Grande (the big house), her paternal grandmother's abode, where her aunt Melina lived with her cousin Nina, beautiful like a fairy but with a tragic destiny awaiting her. Her only friends were the plants in the terrace to which she gave a name, a small black cat that she saved from her mother's wrath and Titina Ingoglia, the only human being who didn't have any bias toward that strange girl. This is the story of a young woman forced to live a life that doesn't belong to her but that finds a way out toward her freedom, in the most unexpected way.