During the course of Covid19’s lockdown, Dario Castagno haphazardly opens an antique trunk that had once belonged to a great aunt. As he spends his solitary days going through the content of portraits and documents, it transpires a captivating microcosm and the author’s surprising Waldensian heritage. By turns celebratory and revelatory, the book is a bittersweet excursus through Dario’s striking lineage and an uncanny alpine populace’s history that endured pogroms and unspeakable prejudices for centuries.