Acknowledgements

When I was growing up—in the middle-class, Pittsburgh suburbia of the 1960s and 70s—I would listen spellbound to my dad’s stories of his childhood. His parents came from Calabria and Belluno Italy to Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. It was a life of poverty, of hunger, of ethnic diversity, of religiously dominant Catholicism, and of complete upheaval from their roots. People tried their hardest to survive in a new city with a new language and with a new kind of struggle.

When I married Steve Veltri, I gained the stories from his family—also Italians who came to America from Calabria. The stories would be sensational if they weren’t true, and I wish I could do them justice. What I have written is a fictionalized version—true stories with fictional characters who are poor substitutes for those who really existed. My undying gratitude goes to Joseph Mazzei, Gabriel Veltri, and Ann Veltri Wallace for the stories of their lives and their families.

I would also like to thank Lorenzo Andreaggi for taking the time to edit my Italian, and my friend Michelle Reiter for her enthusiasm and encouragement.