The Fortunate Pilgrim : A Novel

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE GODFATHER - "A classic... The novel is lifted into literature by its highly charged language, its penetrating insights, and its mixture of tenderness and rage." - New York Times Book ReviewDescribed by the author as his "best and most literary book." Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.The book's hero, Lucia Santa, is an incredibly captivating character and based on Puzo's very own mother - he describes, "her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself, qualities not valued in women at the time." From Library Journal Puzo has called this 1965 pre-Godfather novel his personal favorite of his oeuvre. It recounts the life of Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo, a Southern Italian immigrant who settles in New York in the 1920s. This "very colorful and perceptive novel" remains "highly readable" for today's audience (LJ 3/15/65). Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description efore The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, and with a new preface by the author, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best. From the Hardcover edition. Lucia Santa came to New York from the mountain farms of Italy because she knew there had to be a better life. But what she finds in the streets of Hell's Kitchen is a life to break a strong woman's heart. Two tragic marriages, six children to support by herself, a fiery-hearted daughter who insists on living and loving as an American, an oldest son who gets involved with the Mafia. And through it all, Lucia Santa - wife, widow, mother, grandmothers - endures as a woman of incomparable dignity, courage, and passion Lucia Santa has traveled three thousand miles of dark ocean, from the mountain farms of Italy to the streets of New York, hoping for a better life. Instead, she finds herself in Hell's Kitchen, in a bad marriage, raising six children on her own. As Lucia struggles to hold her family together, her daughter confronts the adult world of work and romance while her eldest son is drawn into the mafia. Meanwhile, her youngest son aspires to American pursuits she cannot understand. LARRY ANGELUZZI SPURRED his jet-black horse proudly through a canyon formed by two great walls of tenements, and at the foot of each wall, marooned on their separate blue-slate sidewalks, little children stopped their games to watch him with silent admiration. Lucia Santa, an Italian immigrant living in Hell's Kitchen, struggles to keep her family together as the new country draws her children down different paths