Waterfall in the Heavens

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.

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.

Mario D'Arrigo is an attorney, a family man and the embodiment of the American Dream. He and his family came to America when he was a young boy following the end of the Second World War. He came of age in America and through happenstance, serendipity and perseverance, Mario forged a path toward fulfilling his family's dream of being the first in his family to be college educated. He earned a degree in and worked as an engineer with a large corporation before going on to law school and establishing his own legal practice in upstate New York where he has spent most of his adult life. Mario enjoys working with his hands, spending time outdoors, going out to dinner with friends, and spending time with his wife Elena, his children and his grandchildren. Having spent years writing technical legal briefs, he has turned his hand to more creative writing by focusing on recounting his extraordinary experiences in 1940's rural Sicily, experiences which helped to define and shape the person that he has become.