- Genre:biography & autobiography
- Sub-genre:Personal Memoirs
- Language:English
- Pages:180
- Paperback ISBN:9781543966008
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Book details
Overview
Poverty is relative and when growing up in a village in which most of the people are in similar economic circumstances, no one is poor – that’s just life. And so it was with Mario and his family growing up on the foothills of Mount Etna, Sicily in the 1940’s. The Memoir gives a first person account of a place and time frozen in the middle ages, of the customs and traditions of a bygone era, of reverence for one’s progenitors, of bombardment during a passing War and its aftermath, of trips up Mount Etna to tend crops on its slopes and gather wood for the cooking fire, of a river of lava that threatens a village, of summer days exploring vineyards and fruit groves, of found money and stone fights and witches and werewolves and ghosts and Catholicism and miracles and hypocrisy and ignorance and kindness and intended and unintended cruelty.
Description
Mario D'Arrigo transports his readers across time to life in war-torn 1940's Sicily as seen through the eyes of a young boy. The invasion of Sicily began with a wave of American warplanes thundering across Sicily, dropping bombs indiscriminately on Mario's Village. He recounts his parents' struggle with poverty and a passing War, and his mother's tenacious pursuit to emigrate to America to educate and improve the lot of her children. But how does a family in poverty raise the funds to pay for the passage of six on a ship to America? Was it even possible? While he recounts the struggle of his parents, Mario reveled in the freedom that the time and place afforded him of days filled with adventures in a countryside unchanged for generations. Waterfall in the Heavens, so named for the image that is conjured by the river of lava seen against the night sky during the eruption of Mount Etna, is a story of a young boy's adventure in an ancient and beautiful land, of a family's struggles of living in poverty in a small Sicilian village, and of a conviction to begin anew. But above all else, this is a story of the strength of a family and its pursuit of the American Dream.
