Westchester Italian Cultural Center: Camilla Calhoun tells the story of her memoir: The White Moth

The author shares her story of living in Italy in the mid-1970s at her friend Aldo Rafanelli’s farm villa where she harvested grapes and olives, sowed wheat, wrote essays and ran a flower shop in Florence. Eventually she married Aldo and they had their first son in Italy before moving to America. As a portrait of three generations of women who marry into the Rafanelli family, The White Moth examines important 20th century historical events in Italy as experienced by the family. The book is inspired by the courage, optimism and resilience of her mother-in-law Alda who welcomed the troops home from WWI in 1918, experienced life during the Spanish Influenza pandemic and kept her family together during the harsh realities of fascism and WWII Italy. The White Moth celebrates the redemptive power of family, farm life, food and the Tuscan landscape through both blissful and turbulent times.