It's the summer of 1957. In the heart of Chicago, first-generation Italian immigrants Angela Rosa and Agostino Peccatori are caught between worlds. Far from home and with five children born in the United States, the Peccatori family is left clinging to old country ways in an era of upending change. While Agostino spends his days running the neighborhood trattoria, Mio Fratello, Angela Rosa must face the building tension at home as her children struggle to define themselves within a family rooted in tradition. When Agostino's wandering eye can no longer be ignored, and lingering questions of fidelity and responsibility invade the Peccatoris' intimate world, the pressure to keep the family together mounts.
Just as it seems the Peccatoris' stoic foundation and resilient spirit are enough to withstand the family friction, the events of a single tragic evening bring all their lives to a sudden and irreversible standstill. Haunted by overwhelming loss, and drowning in years of secrets and deception, the family begins to unravel under the burden of guilt. As the Peccatori children move into adulthood, alienated from one another by grief and the complexity of their adolescence, their ties of kinship are put to the ultimate test.
Bound together by blood yet indelibly marked by loss, the Peccatori family becomes a testament to the power of sacrifice, loyalty, and unconditional love. Told through alternating voices and beautifully crafted prose, When the World Was Young is a stunning, poignant tale of one family's will to survive.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Regarded as one of those cool teachers who inspires students to do great things, an inspired Tony Romano was working on something great, too.
He’d arrive early at Fremd High School, squirrel away in a corner of the library and write in longhand.
“I had first period off, so I’d find a little office and sneak away and try to get down a few words — maybe three or four hundred,” says the soft-spoken 49-year-old teacher.
In the summer with his wife, Maureen, and daughters, Lauren, Angela and Allie, he’d sit on his backyard deck in Glen Ellyn and write more words.
The teachers familiar with Romano’s writing and discipline knew what would happen. Henry Sampson, an English and creative writing teacher, kept telling his students: “One of these days you are going to hear from Mr. Romano.”
Today is that day. Romano’s debut novel, “When the World Was Young” (published by HarperCollins Publishers), hits the bookstores.
“There’s that maxim out there: ‘Those that can, do; and those that can’t, teach.’ Tony disproves that,” says Gary Anderson, a fellow writer who co-wrote a textbook with Romano and now is chairman of the English Department at Fremd. “The best writing teachers are writers.”
Romano had won writing awards, but his collection of short stories didn’t draw much attention from publishers, who wanted a novel.
Born in the Italian province of Benevento, near Naples, Romano moved with his family to Chicago as an infant. Each of his parents had a sixth-grade education and didn’t know a word of English. His dad worked as a tailor in a suit factory, bringing his lunch of two salami sandwiches every day for more than 30 years. His mom worked the night shift in a screw factory so the family wouldn’t need a baby-sitter.
While that background and neighborhood gave him a setting and an eye for detail, his book’s characters and plot came from Romano’s head.
“I remember driving by this pizza place in Glen Ellyn, and I saw this guy,” Romano recalls. “He came out with a bottle of wine or something, and I imagined him back in the old neighborhood, going to Sunday dinner and dipping the bread in the gravy, that’s what we called (tomato sauce), and stealing a meatball before it was ready.”
Two years of writing later, he had his novel. The next five years, he tried to sell it.
“This is my rejection folder,” Romano says, sitting in a teachers lounge as he offers a red binder brimming with letters. “I’m an expert in rejection.”
And these are only the ones that came back with “ink” from an editor. “I only kept the ones that had something positive,” Romano says.
On Jan. 6, 2005, Romano’s wife handed him the phone. “It’s New York,” she whispered to her skeptical husband.
“I loved your book,” gushed agent Marly Rusoff.
“At that point, I could barely breathe,” Romano recalls. Three weeks later, he signed with HarperCollins. The famous literary house also will publish his collection of short stories next year, and will consider another novel he’s completed as well as a follow-up to “When the World Was Young.”
Fremd’s media center is holding a book release party at 7 p.m. Wednesday to kick off a four-state book tour with stops in Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Palatine and Naperville.
“I think the kids are just going to have even more respect for him,” says devoted reader Maria Mungai, an AP Spanish teacher who grew up in an Italian family and says Romano’s book “has heart.”
“It really inspired me that he made time for his own writing when he had a billion papers to grade and all that comes with being a teacher,” notes Alyse Liebovich, 24, a former student and current photographer who took the photo of Romano for his book jacket. “This man I regarded as an incredible teacher is also an amazing writer.”
Balancing his family duties and his 26-year teaching career in English and psychology, Romano still seems a bit overwhelmed by his new identity as a critically acclaimed novelist.
“I never say writer — it almost sounds pretentious,” Romano says. “I tell them I’m a teacher.
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