David Kertzer, provost of Brown University, is also a professor of

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 9, 2008 | by Dennis Lythgoe Deseret Morning News

Listen to the interview(34 minutes)

David Kertzer, provost of Brown University, is also a professor of anthropology and Italian studies who writes accessibly about Italian history and culture -- six books so far and another on the way. The man is prolific even though he is only in the middle of a five-year term as an academic administrator, which takes considerable time away from his writing.

"I have some marvelous material for my next book, 'Mussolini and the Pope,' which I'm dying to get written," said Kertzer during a phone interview from Brown University in Providence, R.I. But the book he has just finished about human rights, titled "Amalia's Tale," is an intriguing story of a young peasant woman, Amalia Bagnacavalli, who contracts syphilis from a sickly baby she is given from a foundling home.

Her life and her health in serious jeopardy, she finds a young and ambitious attorney, Augusto Barbieri, who agrees to seek legal damages on her behalf from Italian courts. Over a decade, he wins a surprising victory, but Amalia never approaches the recovery of all she has lost.

This is an unforgettable legal and social story that constantly rises and falls on various decisions that could be dull or complex were it not for the writing gift and intellectual genius Kertzer brings to this work. He makes it compelling by telling a true story about suffering, death and the unfair use of authority.

He also understands the "daunting nature of Italian law with its multilevel courts."

Kertzer refers to what he does as "microhistory," first popularized in the 1970s when historians decided to detour around their usual focus on "the elite, kings, wars, etc. and focus on real people, especially those who were illiterate," said Kertzer.

The idea he embraced is to "focus on an individual, someone who is part of an illiterate mass who became swept up in a leading issue of the time and it led to a documentary record of some kind."

When Kertzer researched the history of foundling homes in Italy from old churches and other depositories, he discovered other documents that "excited interest" and led him to believe that another kind of book was possible. "It became work for a detective, like a treasure hunt," said Kertzer. "You try various leads and hunches. Not many pan out, but if you're lucky some of them do. I came to understand the financial relationship between Amalia and her lawyer, and my hunch paid off."

That relationship was key, because when the attorney first took on her case, he was very idealistic and determined to right a human wrong. As time progressed and he had spent a lot of money and time without a resolution, his values became corrupted. He became more interested in his own financial benefit than in the defendant's.

It's a sad story but filled with implications about medical science, the legal world, the role of women and the connection between church and state. Kertzer was also taken with the discovery in the archives "of a tale of woe that victimized hundreds and hundreds of women, yet it was totally buried because officials tried to cover it up."

"There is nothing more exciting than getting a document produced by one of the characters in the book, i.e., a handwritten note from Count Isolani, one of the authorities sued by Amalia and her attorney, and as you see his hand-scribbled writing you are transported back to 1890," said Kertzer.

He was disappointed that many details of this story were simply lost, not available in any document. "We have no idea what Amalia looked like, for instance. And there were undoubtedly conversations you would love to have overheard. What was it like for Amalia to tell her husband she had syphilis? But I tried to squeeze every possible bit of information I could from the documents so the reader could judge the validity of the case."

Kertzer realizes there will be some critics who will think he should have footnoted every sentence. "But I didn't do it. You can't do it when you write serious history for a broad, popular audience. Yet I used archival data that other scholars have not seen."

One of Kertzer's challenges in writing was "to build a narrative of suspense. There are surprising aspects to this story. There are questions of timing and pacing, and I had to be careful not to proceed too quickly, not to cut away too quickly -- and to give some historical perspective for the reader. What was Italy like during this period?"

In the author's opinion, there are aspects of this story that "resonate today, such as mothers who nurse babies and pass on AIDS to them. Doctors in any age are not making easy choices. They are not just technicians but are specialists making moral decisions."

Kertzer estimated that 20 percent of babies in 19th century Europe would die before their first birthday for many reasons. "People of that time were living with the death of children all the time. Many were abandoned at birth to a family home, and what was good for the babies was not necessarily good for the women who would work for a paltry sum as wet nurses."