The cryptic review in the LA Times picqued my interest,and led me to inquire further.
Mark Rotella is Forecasts Editor of Publishers Weekly.
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Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria by Mark Rotella
North Point Press: 308 pp., $25
Los Angeles Times- Books

...After a brief trip to Calabria (through the region of his ancestors), with his father a sculptor who has not returned to the town where he was born for 30 years, Rotella finds himself drawn back again and again to the hardscrabble, still un-touristed area in the toe of the boot. He returns come l'ulivo, like the olive, every two years.

In the village of Gimigliano, he finds that he is related to pretty much everyone. He feels enormous respect for the Calabrese hardheadedness, for their sadness and their endless hard work. His palate is awakened by homemade bread baked in olive branches, by fresh picante sauce and wines that remind him of the Calabrese themselves: hard-headed and flavorful. "Stolen Figs" is the anti-Mayle version of travels in Europe, of finding one's true home, whether you like it or not, the source of your personality and appetites.

DISCOVERIES
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-reynolds
22jun22,1,3569205.story?coll=la-headlines-bookreview
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From the Publisher
Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy--a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during the scorching summers while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy.

Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist redoubts. A grandson of Calabrian immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years...
Stolen Figs is a model travelogue--at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

From The Critics
The New York Times
There are already bad books on the subject; this one is good, the product of persistent, gentle curiosity and persistently open eyes....there are the feasts and joys and faith of a hardscrabble life. By the end, you're no longer so startled that Sybaris, the indulgent city of the Sybarites, once lay in Calabria. — Michael Pye

Publisher's Weekly
The jacket copy defines PW Forecasts editor Rotella's narrative as a "model travelogue," but it's much more. Even without a conventional conflict and plot, the author's intensity and personal commitment to a country and its inhabitants cast a spell. Anecdotes range from comedic-a long unseen relative scolds Rotella's father, "Thirty years and you don't write!"-to curiously romantic, as when the author's wedding ring slips off his finger while swimming and a "crazy aunt" exclaims, "That's good luck. Now you will have to return!"

Descriptions of delicacies such as soppressata, capicola, fettucine and ragu simmered with pepperoni incite a desire to be there just for the luscious, succulent meals, supporting Rotella's belief that you simply can't get a bad meal in Italy.

Calabria is a particularly vivid character; readers learn how much the region has been through: spoiled by drought, destroyed by earthquakes and plundered by barons and kings...Playful moments are equally memorable, detailing petty fig heists from trees belonging to unknown farmers. Such likable protagonists as Rotella's loving father, his wife, and guide Giuseppe are woven unobtrusively through the tale of a culture that counts among its children Tony Bennett, Phil Rizzuto and Stanley Tucci. The book is a love letter, and Rotella reinforces that feeling when he writes, "I am a romantic. With each trip back to Calabria, I've felt myself becoming not only more Calabrese but more Italian." Readers, whether Italian or not, will find themselves captivated by so much meticulously drawn history and enchanting terrain. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal
Calabria, the southern foot-shaped part of Italy and the birthplace of Rotella's forebears, first captivated the author when he visited the region with his father in the early 1990s. This candid travel memoir is a synthesis of his successive return journeys of exploration and kinship alliance. Enlisting a knowledgeable and affable local photographer as a guide/companion, Rotella tours Calabria's larger centers (Catanzaro, Cosenza, Reggio di Calabria), coastal towns (Crotone, Ciro, Sibari, Locri), and remote villages of the Aspromonte region... His genuine curiosity, genial informality, and Calabrese origins facilitate encounters with custodians of museums and churches as well as craftspeople (weavers, coppersmiths, potters, artists) who would otherwise be more suspicious, reticent, and aloof. Rotella delights in and evokes the simple pleasures of breaking bread or sipping a caff with relatives and strangers, of tucking into pure and unembellished Calabrese food or gorging on plump, luxuriant figs. His narrative, at times a bit leisurely, lures the reader into this passionate affirmation of blood and belonging. Recommended for all libraries.  Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews
Evocative, beautifully rendered travelogue/memoir by Publishers Weekly editor Rotella, recounting his adventures in Calabria, the toe of Italy's boot and the land of his ancestry. Although it's the area from which most Italian immigrants originate, the south has been largely overlooked in the recent spate of books on Italy. But Rotella fell under Calabria's spell after a quick visit with his reluctant father to his grandparents' town of Gimigliano and for the next decade returned biannually, "like the olive, which bears fruit every two years," according to his guide and friend Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who introduced the writer to Calabria and offered a personal interpretation of topics as varied as immigration, religion, and "the polenta heads from northern Italy."

Rotella encountered a world in which things were made, not manufactured: bread was baked in an oven fired by the wood of the olive tree, a butchered pig fed a family for six months, a dish of sautéed chicory began with a long walk to find the greens. He traces Calabria's long history of invasion and occupation. He explores its links with mythology: Odysseus washed up on the shore of Lamezia, the Sybarites cavorted in the sulfur baths of the Grotta delle Ninfe (Cave of the Nymphs), and King Arthur reputedly loved the city of Reggio.

As Rotella takes pains to feel a part of this land, he makes us privy to the Calabreses' charming habits: their evening passegiata, their friendliness, their suspicions, their propensity to hang out in groups-"and in Calabria especially, this hanging out is an art form." With the eye of a writer, a son, and a historian, the author searches and finds Calabria's soul. His love of the region'sphysical beauty, its people, food, celebrations, and religious devotions is infectious. "It will never attract the tourists like the rest of Italy," Giuseppe tells him. "How lucky," Rotella admits to thinking selfishly. Better than gelato. Not to be missed.

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