THE GHOSTS OF ITALY

Paolantonio recounts her trips to Italy in search of her ancestry and a new life.

Born in 1959, the author, the daughter of two first-generation Americans of Italian descent, grew up mostly in Long Island, New York. Her paternal grandfather Nicola first traveled to the United States in 1907 to join his three older brothers there and fell in love with the country so deeply that he enthusiastically pushed his children and grandchildren to thoroughly assimilate; as a result, Paolantonio was raised somewhat disconnected from her Italian heritage. This was a void she looked to fill when she first traveled to his native town of Calitri, an “ancient hilltown” in eastern Campania. She would travel back many times thereafter; delightfully haunted by the “ghostly world of [her] ancestors,” she established relationships with both the paternal and maternal sides of the family. In this sweetly tender remembrance, the author, affectionately nicknamed L’Americana by her family, fell deeply in love with Calitri…and then with Giuseppe Zarrilli, “The Handsome Man from Macchiursi.” She also learned about the secretive life of Angela Maria, her mysterious grandmother, and even bought the home that was once hers in the village, making it and Calitri her own. (“I always felt deep down that someday I would find the spirit of my grandmother. Between my first journey and today there have been several years of discovery in this small mountain village that I now call home. After buying her house on via Fontana, I had finally found her.”) The author’s rediscovery of her lineage, and the dramatic way in which she embraced it, is related with humor and warmth in endearingly informal, even intimately confessional, prose. The memoir’s tone can veer into the earnestly sentimental (bordering on saccharine), but, in the main, this is an affecting recollection, conveyed with candor and poignancy.

A touching memoir that should resonate deeply with anyone yearning to connect with familial roots.