Page 3 - Italiian American Herald - December 2021

ITALIAN-AMERICAN HERALD
BOOK REVIEW
A mother’s recollections are richly and vividly re-imagined
DECEMBER 2021 | ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM 3
Vol. 8 No. 12 – December 2021
A MONTHLY NEWSPAPER SERVING THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
A DIVISION OF TODAY MEDIA Editor & Publisher
Robert F. Martinelli
Art Director
Rosalinda Rocco
This issue’s contributors
Melissa Cannavo-Marino Frank Cipparone Jeanne Outlaw-Cannavo Ken Mammarella Charlie Sacchetti Murray Schulman
Senior correspondent
Jeanne Outlaw-Cannavo
Managing Editor
Al Kemp
Associate Publisher/Director of Advertising
Charles W. Tomlinson Jr.
Advertising Sales
Tanya Tecce
Audience Development Director
David Bergeman
Production Director
Donna Hill
Graphic Designers
Eric Bolis Chris Johnson Shelby Mills
Editor Emeritus
Joseph T. Cannavo
TODAY MEDIA, A MARTINELLI HOLDINGS LLC
President Robert F. Martinelli Secretary-Treasurer Richard Martinelli
In Memoriam
Chairman Angelo R. Martinelli (1927-2018) Vice President Ralph Martinelli (1962-2019)
For advertising information, call (302) 504-1335
or email ctomlinson@todaymediainc.com.
For subscription information, call (302) 504-1274
or email iahsubscriptions@todaymediainc.com.
For editorial, email ItalianAmericanHerald@todaymediainc.com. Published monthly by Today Media,3301 Lancaster Pike, Suite 5C, Wilmington, DE 19805 and distributed
at various locations throughout the Tri-State area.
By Al Kemp Managing editor
Luisa Livorno Ramondo grew up enthralled by the stories her mother and father would share about their
journey out of Torino, Italy, and their arrival in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia in the late 1960s.
As a young child, she said, she felt like a bit of an outsider caught between her Italian heritage and the promise of American prosperity – the girl who brought an anchovy sandwich for lunch while her schoolmates brought peanut butter and jelly.
She said she knew long ago that her mother’s journey out of poverty and into
a new land was worthy of a book, and she spent nearly a decade trying to put those events into words, finally gaining traction in 2020 with the help of a developmental editor connected with the Creator Institute at Georgetown University.
While the coronavirus pandemic raced across the globe, Ramondo wrote with renewed vigor, and within a year produced a manu- script for her first novel, “Beyond the Cobble- stones,” which she calls her “passion project” inspired by her mother’s recollections of her own childhood as one of 10 children in a family struggling to get by in World War II -era Italy.
The protagonist of “Beyond the Cobble- stones” is Claudia Valentino, a re-imagined version of the author’s mother Antonietta, who yearns for a life beyond the hardscrabble existence in her small village, where she is
no stranger to hunger, hardship, loss, trauma
and occasional bombing raids by German warplanes.
From a very young age, Claudia aspires to a better life, but her mother sternly chides her for “filling your head with these ideas than can’t happen.”
But Claudia’s persistence and resolve are stronger than her many obstacles, and she is drawn to a future of infinite possibility on distant shores far from her tiny village and its impossibly narrow streets.
“I made a few things up along the way to make it interesting, but the towns and general path are true,” the author said. “I fictionalized the character names, but they are almost all based on real people. And my mother did make the trip to the
U.S. ahead of her family with one of her sisters, arranging for the rest to come over at a later date. However, I was concerned about getting all the facts straight in order to write
a memoir, so I made it historical fiction instead.”
And while historical fiction in the hands
of a less skilled storyteller can come off as
dry or turgid, Ramondo’s prose gleams and glistens as she spins Claudia’s coming-of-
age story. She evokes heartfelt emotion and dramatic tension with ease and confidence, re-creating events in vivid fashion and composing dialogue in voices that flow naturally with the narrative, embedded in the story like the cobblestones that are embedded in the village street.
The author said one event that helped kick-start the book was her 2018 trip with her father Leonardo to the home country,
where she was able to sit in silence on the very same cobblestone alley where her mother grew up, recording her impressions on her laptop computer. Her mother’s old photograph of that narrow alley, in a canyon of stone dwellings, serves as the book’s cover.
Ramondo lives with her husband and three sons in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she works as a real estate agent. She has begun researching her second novel, which will be a sequel to her first.
Purchase “Beyond the Cobblestones” at amazon.com. Get in touch with the author or learn more about the book at luisalivornoramondo.com.
Claudia yearns for
a life beyond the hardscrabble existence in her small village, where she is no stranger to hunger, hardship, loss, trauma and occasional bombing raids by German warplanes.
Contents
Achiever ......................................... 4 Its All Good/ Per I Bambini .............. 6 News From Italy.............................. 9 The Chef’s Perspective ..................10 Pagina Italiana...............................11 Vini D’Italia ....................................12 Local ....................................... 12, 15 Language ......................................14
Luisa Livorno Ramondo, author of “Beyond the Cobblestones,” returned to the village where her mother grew up, and recorded her impressions on a laptop computer, during a 2018 visit to Italy. Her mother’s old photograph of that same village serves as the book’s cover.