Diana Giovinnazo, in conversation with J. Ryan Stradal, discusses & signs Daughters of Naples

Somewhere in a drawer there is a photograph of a woman nobody living can name. She is standing in front of a building in a country your family left, and the story that went with her died with whoever last told it. Second and third generations carry that gap around quietly — a surname they cannot pronounce the old way, a recipe with a step missing, a grandmother who answered questions in a language that ran out before the answers did. Historical fiction set in the place your people came from does something a family tree cannot: it puts weather and noise and a wet street back around the photograph. Readers who come to a Tuesday-night talk for this are rarely casual about it. They bring their own version of the drawer. Free-flowing question sessions here tend to turn into people telling their own family stories to a stranger with a microphone, which is the entire point. Tickets required; the talk begins at 7:00pm on the 25th.

Bring your version of the drawer. Somebody there will want to hear about her.