Peter Chiarella

This is the story of the author's family from the late 1800s in Calabria, Italy. The story involves his great aunt - who was a mistress to a very rich man, his father - who fled Italy for the US when he was young, and several other family members who were very poor in Italy. It talks of the hardships they faced at that time in Italy, and what happened when some of them left for the United States. Most of the book was written from stories his grandmother told him.



It was a pretty good book. Not very well written, but I enjoyed the stories and how all the people intertwined in the book. Many of his family members were farmers who worked from dawn to dusk every day of the week and still didn't have enough food to make it through the winter. They had to give olive oil to the Dons in order to "pay rent". Their lives were very hard and not rewarding at all. I wish I would have asked my grandmother to tell me more stories while she was still alive, so that I would know what it was like for her parents and grandparents growing up in such a place.… (más)