Family Saga

3rd in trilogy about shoemaker?s family. This is about Ciro Lazzari who was left with his brother as a young at a convent in Italy to be raised by the nuns. It is also about Enza , a girl Ciro meets as a teenager when he is hired to dig her sister?s grave. We follow each of them through their separate lives until they end up reuniting and marrying in NYC. They move to MN where Ciro opens his own shoemaking business. He dies around 40 from cancer that came to him through his time in WWI and being sprayed with Mustard gas. Good story.

This is a sweet romance set in rustic Italy and the US during the early part of the 20th Century.

There is nothing to dislike here but the fact that everything is a little too perfect and I think it has a tendency to tell and not show what's going on. The center of the book is the love story of Enza and Ciro and to me, there was absolutely zero foundation for the love. Enza's decision to marry Ciro really makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

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This sappy novel tells the story of two whiny Italian peasants who immigrate to America (sort of) from WWI through WWII.

Tedious, badly written books like this make me want to give up reading forever. The only impression it left me with was the thought that Italians must be the most annoying people on planet Earth.

My favorite character was the mustard gas. ( )

for Green County book club; very descriptive ( I started skimming). seemed more like Cir's story than his wife's; more details the beginning, then less as they got older; unsatisfying ( )