There is a road in southern Italy that begins in the city of Eboli and ends in the mountain village of Gagliano. To anyone who makes that journey, it is an ascent to hell. Gagliano is no more than a scattered cluster of fallen down whitewashed old buildings, hanging desperately to barren slopes near a rocky cliff. The village has been there for centuries and for as far back as the oldest person can remember it has always been a place of severe poverty, unrelenting disease, frightening superstition, monotonous despair, and death. Oppressed and defeated by those conditions, it is said that the peasants of Gagliano do not sing and there is a saying among them that "Christ stopped in Eboli," that somehow God had forgotten them and Christ stopped at the other end of the road. Because hope and j…