Speranza heard a friend’s story about his parents: an Italian prisoner of war and a French Quarter Sicilian woman who met during World War II in New Orleans. Her first paid job was in the children’s room of her town’s public library, and she was a journalist early in her career, before spending thirty-plus years in the water and critical infrastructure business. She’s been a writer and book nerd all her life. Speranza (she/her) is the granddaughter of Irish and Italian immigrants, raised Catholic, and educated by nuns. She lives with Jon Kardon in New Orleans and Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts. She is committed to celebrating and honoring the city’s fragile and fascinating culture, environment, and history. The Italian Prisoner is her first novel.Ī native Bostonian and die-hard member of Red Sox Nation, Ms. Her first paid job was in the children’s room of her town’s public library, and she was a journalist early in her career before spending thirty-plus years in the water and critical infrastructure business.
Speranza is the granddaughter of Irish and Italian immigrants, raised Catholic, and educated by nuns. Inspired by little-known historical events and set to a swing-era soundtrack, The Italian Prisoner is an engrossing story of wartime love, family secrets, and a young woman’s struggle to chart her own course at an inflection point in American history.Įlisa M. When Rose gets a promotion at work, she must make an agonizing choice: follow a traditional path like Marie or keep working after the war and live on her own terms. Italy has switched sides in the war, so the POWs are allowed out to socialize, giving Rose and Sal a chance to grow closer. There, Rose falls for Sal, a handsome and intelligent POW. When the parish priest organizes a goodwill mission to visit Italian prisoners of war at a nearby military base, Rose and her vivacious best friend, Marie, join the group. Behind her parents’ back, Rose lands a job at the shipyard, where she feels free and important for the first time in her life.
But she secretly dreams of being more like her fiercely independent widowed godmother. Her parents expect Rose to marry a local boy and start a family.
Her older brother and sister both joined the Army, and Rose prays for their safety as World War II rages overseas. Rose Marino lives with her Sicilian immigrant parents and helps in the family grocery store.
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