Felicia, chronicle of an extraordinary journey is the book that recounts the life of Felicia Muscio, but above all the journey she undertook in 1895 to join her husband who had emigrated to America years earlier and had stopped in the Tarapacà region of northern Chile, in the small town of Iquique located between the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama desert, one of the driest on the planet.

The woman set off on the journey accompanied by her daughter Maria Rosa, just four years old, unaware of the enormous difficulties they would encounter. From Naples 40 days of navigation to Buenos Aires. Then two days by train to San Martin de Mendoza at the foot of the Andes. They then continued on the back of a mule to cross the Andes and after twenty-five days of walking reached Valparaiso, a port city in central Chile, where they finally reached Iquique on a merchant sailing ship and after a further ten days of sailing, were reunited with the head of the family, Vito Sciaraffia.

The now reunited family resumed living there and planning for the future, but in Chile they had to face many more misfortunes and due to a bad economy they were forced to return to Oppido where, unfortunately, Vito was killed by lightning during a summer storm. Felicia returned to Chile to be near her children who had meanwhile married there and it was there that she ended her days at the age of 71.

This is the story of a woman who crosses not only geographical and physical boundaries, but also cultural and temporal ones. It is the story of a pioneer who today is considered a symbol of female emigration, of emancipation, of the strength and determination of all those women who do not let themselves be stopped by a society that sees them as passive subjects.

FELICIA de Los Andes crosses the ocean and creates an unbreakable bond between two completely different and distant worlds. In search of her husband and the longed-for family reunion, FELICIA leaves the remote village in Lucania and, after an incredible and improbable journey, arrives in northern Chile, in Iquique. Here is the path traced on the map, a channel left open forever by a ‘simple’ woman.

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