{"product_id":"book-fjjz","title":"Sicilian Gothic - The Convergence of Carmelo and Nellie","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Most novels don't have footnotes,\" said a friend. True, but this one is based on real people. Carmelo and Nellie Tosto were my parents. It's a work of fiction because there wasn't enough documentable evidence to write a typical biography.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnlike today, with its surfeit of personal data - photos, videos, correspondence, diaries, and the like - the period between 1901 and 1939 afforded few opportunities for lower class immigrants to leave tangible evidence of their presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCarmelo's history is sparse. His documentation originates at an institution for abandoned infants in Catania, Sicily in 1901. He grew up in a nearby fishing village and at the age of fourteen went to work as a merchant marine sailor until 1925, when he jumped ship in Baltimore to escape Mussolini's conscription..\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNellie was born in Sicily but grew up from infancy in America with serious aspirations to become a Catholic nun. There's much more evidence of her early life, but her character and story needed some enhancement.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter diligent gleaning using powerful internet search tools, I amassed a trove of facts about them. I added whatever I could collect from personal reminiscences, family lore, and artifacts. And though it was exciting to see the early days of my long-gone parents taking shape, it was also frustrating. Like scrapbooks retrieved from a flood, the tides of time had dissolved much detail about them. As the first fruit of their convergence, I didn't know them personally until they were well into their thirties. By then, like most of us, they had changed markedly from their youthful personas. So I assembled their stories with the connective tissue of fiction, based on plausible inferences from  facts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn so doing, my parents became more human, more fascinating, and more endearing than when we made each other miserable in the 1940s and 1950s. I hope this book will help you appreciate them better than I did then, and as much as I do now.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"INAudio","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49437989568816,"sku":"BDfjjz","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/fjjz-Square-cover.jpg?v=1773412056","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-fjjz","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}