The Fortunate Pilgrim
Author: Mario Puzo
Acquired in: May 2019
"Audacity had liberated them. They were pioneers, though they never walked an American plain and never felt real soil beneath their feet. They moved in a sadder wilderness, where the language was strange, where their children became members of a different race. It was a price that must be paid." Doesn’t this quote express fully an immigrant’s turmoil? For however good the life in the new land may be, the feeling of being alien never receded fully for Lucia Santa.
Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo is a formidable woman who has suffered much- set sail from Sicily seeking greener pastures in America, widowed in the blink of an eye and later married to another Italian on the verge of a mental breakdown. She now lives in a tenement in an Italian-majority settlement in New York, trying to instil Italian values in her family that is becoming rapidly Americanised.
It broke my heart to read how these poor immigrants literally work themselves to death to earn a pittance. Then they put it away, unaware that the banks they entrust their money with childlike faith are themselves falling prey to the unstable economy during the Great Depression. The rich feed off the poor, the poor become poorer but still struggle with all their might to at least save their children from the black hole that claimed them, they who could only vainly dream of a life free from strife.
Mario Puzo loved this book more than he did the Godfather. He was disappointed when The Godfather became a cult classic while The Fortunate Pilgrim was relegated to the shadows. I'm not surprised by his dismay; this story based on his mother's life is in a way better than the Godfather, which apart from the impressive chess-like plotting, just seemed to glorify senseless murder. I loved this tale of a single mother's struggle to hold together her dissolving family because of the emotionally charged plot sans any flamboyant drama. Not all of Mario Puzo's books are to my liking, but this one certainly struck a chord.
"America, America, what dreams are dreamed in your name?", the book cries out aloud.
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