Book Review – In Revere, In Those Days - by Roland Merullo

This book is a heartwarming tale of an Italian/American boy, Antonio Benedetto, growing up amidst a large, devoutly Catholic family living in Revere, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, in the 1950s. It is listed as fiction, but because of the intricacy of the author's descriptions of the family's interactions with each other, the story seems based on his own personal experience. Add to that the fact that the author himself attended Exeter Prep School and Brown University, as does his main character, and it seems all the more that it must be based on his own personal story.

As a basis for the story is the Italian community's underlying, and unspoken awareness, that they are looked down upon by the more affluent people of English decent whose ancestors came long before them. In some of the book's characters this acts as a stimulant to rise above their humble beginnings, but in others it is to them a fact that they can never really compete in the American world. They feel too stereotyped by the commonly held idea that all Italians are somehow connected to crime and the mafia to realize their own innate potentials.

Other than the main character, Tonio Benedetto, there are four family members who play an important part in the story. They are his paternal grandparents, Dom and Lia, his Uncle Peter, who almost won a boxing championship, and his cousin Rosalie who is two years older than Tonio. Others who briefly play an integral part in Tonio's development are his mother's best friend, Lois Londoner, and an older woman named Lydia who is employed in the office of Tonio's prep school.

Tonio's parents are killed in a plane crash when he is eleven, and he goes to live with his grandparents where he develops a special closeness to his grandfather, Dom. It was Dom who at only fifteen years old set out from southern Italy, alone among strangers, in the hold of a passenger ship to seek a better life in America. When he is settled, he returns to bring other members of his family to share in his good fortune.

The richness in this book is in the writer's intimate style. There is pathos that brought tears to my eyes, and humor that made me laugh, but in the end, it is a story about how to get to know oneself and the basic things that make life worth living.

Since I usually look for exciting, adventurous stories, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed and appreciate this thoughtful story and the author who wrote it.