Romano traversed the four corners of Ferrara, Modena, Mantua, and Rovigo in search of honest jobs and unsavory ones alike. The area is known locally as the Bassa, a flat, clay-rich part of the Pianura Padana that runs from the peaks of the Reggiano Apennine Mountains to the Comacchio valleys on the Adriatic Sea. It’s a plain of fields, swamps, Po River tributaries, and farms that from above looks like an immense tapestry of tens of thousands of uneven threads.
