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eBook Category: Mainstream
eBook Description: A naive, young Clerina is brought by her much beloved husband, Leonardo, from the towering, mystical mountains of Southern Italy to America's flat Heartland where there is promise of better livelihood. As she struggles to understand an alien culture, reels from deaths of children, and agonizes over bitter letters from her disapproving mother in Italy, her spirit gradually fades. The story mirrors the trauma of many immigrants to this country. It also faithfully depicts ordinary life in the Italian community of Des Moines, Iowa early in the 20th century.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works, Published: http://www.fictionworks.com, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2004

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [204 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [195 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [174 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [709 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [195 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [194 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [219 KB] , hiebook (KML) [468 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [257 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [160 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [200 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [242 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [263 KB]
Words: 60195
Reading time: 171-240 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Calabria! It was there on the sign up ahead. I hadn't anticipated this strong reaction. Tears edged down my face.

"No, you can't cry," I told myself. "You're not familiar with this road, nor with the crazy Italian drivers."

We weren't even near my grandpa's tiny town of Umbriatico. The rugged mountains he had talked about hadn't begun to appear yet. But we were actually in Calabria. I felt like I had come home.

Please, God, all I want is to see the house where Grandma and Grandpa lived. I don't know how we'll know where it is. I'll trust that to you. I just want to see where they lived.

"Sam, we're getting close."

"Are you cryin', Mom?"

"I guess so--pretty dumb, huh? I didn't know I felt this way."

"Didn't you ever know your Grandma? Just your Grandpa?" My eighteen-year-old son had been a great travelling companion, interested in whatever I proposed. Now, his sensitive caring helped tremendously. I didn't know what we would find in the tiny town in the mountains.

"I saw her once, Sam, that's all. You're lucky, you have two grandmas."

I was suddenly caught up in a reverie, remembering the one time I had met the woman whose memory had set me on this quest to Italy, this search to understand how living in Des Moines, Iowa would be so traumatic that over thirty years of her life would be spent in a mental hospital.

"But Daddy, what should I say to her?" I remember standing hesitantly, holding onto the door of our maroon 1950 Ford. My eyes must have been filled with apprehension in meeting this unknown grandmother. Everyone I knew had a grandmother and I had always wished for one. My mother's mother had died the year I was born. This woman, my father's mother, whom we were about to visit had rarely been spoken of, and then with deep sadness. Her name was Clerina. She was an inmate in the building at Clarinda that they called the "Building of Hope." The most severely mentally ill were housed within.

"Don't worry about it, Tina. She won't know who you are. Just give her a kiss. She'll think you are Aunt Minnie or Aunt Jennie. She still thinks they're little girls." my dad comforted.

Three of us, two cousins and I, waited by the car while Uncle Joe and my father went to get their mother. I wondered about the grandma. In my favorite book, Heidi, there were two grandmothers. Maybe she would look like I imagined the old grandmother who lived on the mountain.

Finally, a chubby, white-haired little lady with short-cropped hair, two men on either side of her, appeared in the doorway of the massive building. We young cousins walked reluctantly toward the doorway of the red brick institutional building. Uncle Joe spoke in Italian as they drew nearer. Daddy whispered to us girls that he was telling his mother that we were her grandchildren. She was agitated. Her hands gestured wildly. It was easy to understand, by her pointing at us and shaking her head no, that she didn't believe her sons. My dad went to the trunk of the car and pulled out a picnic basket. We visitors ushered the "Grandma" to a brightly painted picnic table on the rolling lawn of the institution.

After a long and very tense hour, "Grandma" was taken back to her building. Five weary visitors drove quietly back to Des Moines. That was the last I ever saw of my grandmother. She died soon after our visit.