Book Details:
Book Title: Birds of Passage, an Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story by Joe Giordano
Category: Adult Fiction, 260
pages
Genre: Historical coming of age
romance
Publisher: Harvard Square Editions
Release date: October 9, 2015
Book Description:
What
turns the gentle mean and the mean brutal? The thirst for wealth? The demand
for respect? Vying for a woman? Birds of Passage recalls the Italian
immigration experience at the turn of the twentieth-century when New York’s
streets were paved with violence and disappointment.
Leonardo
Robustelli leaves Naples in 1905 to seek his fortune. Carlo Mazzi committed
murder and escaped. Azzura Medina is an American of Italian parents. She’s
ambitious but strictly controlled by her mother. Leonardo and Carlo vie for her
affection.
Azzura,
Leonardo, and Carlo confront con men, Tammany Hall politicians, the
longshoreman’s union, Camorra clans, Black Hand extortion, and the Tombs
prison.
Book Review:
It
is not often that a historical fiction set in two different geographically
diverse areas grabs my attention as a reader. I shy away from this genre and
try not to render my half baked comments about the same. But when I got an
opportunity to try this book, I took it up because it was touted as a ‘rollicking
entertainer’.
While
the book is in no way light hearted and entertaining, I am glad I picked this
one up. I did not expect a mockery or a funny book about the difficulties the
immigrants faced. But I did expect a dry humour and wit in the story line.
Birds of Passage, on the contrary was a beautiful heavy read. It touches your
mind in a way only poignant literature could do. Kudos to the author for being
so expressive in his words.
Leonardo
and Carlo are Italian men, both reaching America at the turn of the twentieth
century, leaving Italy for their own, diverse, individual reasons. Their paths
cross in the country they reached in search of fortune and anonymity. While
romance is in the air, even that is plagued by politics and wealth differences.
Two young men, desperate to succeed, approach life in different ways, stopping
at nothing. What happens when they are drawn into the world of crime, mafia and
corrupted politics forms the rest of the story.
The
language is powerful, the scenes are shocking and memorable. And as a reader
who knows little about both the countries that are involved, I saw this book as
a glimpse into the past of the Italian Immigrants in America. While most events
that transpired in this book might seem improbable now, history has enough
proof to show us they happened.
Read
this book if you are prepared to know how hard it is to totally come out of a
culture and country into a diverse, shocking, whole new world.
Meet the author:
Joe Giordano was
born in Brooklyn. His father and grandparents immigrated to New York from
Naples. Joe and his wife, Jane have lived in Greece, Brazil, Belgium and the
Netherlands. They now live in Texas with their shih tzu Sophia. Joe's stories
have appeared in more than sixty magazines including Bartleby Snopes, The
Newfound Journal, and The Summerset Review.
PRICE: $6.16 for Kindle, $22.95 for Paperback
BOOK LINKS: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1941861083
Thanks for the time and attention you gave my novel.
ReplyDeleteJoe Giordano