Waterfall in the Heavens by Mario D'Arrigo

Poverty is relative and when growing up in a village in which most of the people you know are in similar economic circumstances, no one is poor – that's just life. And so it was with young Mario growing up on the foothills of Mount Etna, Sicily in the 1940's. He tells the first person account of a place and time frozen in the middle ages, of the customs and traditions of a bygone era, of pride in and strength of the family, of reverence for one's progenitors, of bombardment during a passing War and its aftermath, of trips up Mount Etna to tend crops on its slopes and gather wood for the cooking fire, of a river of lava that threatens a village, of summer days exploring vineyards and fruit groves, of found money and stone fights and witches and werewolves and ghosts and Catholicism and miracles and hypocrisy and ignorance and kindness and intended and unintended cruelty.