Summer in Italy
Summer in Italy is a feel-good story about a driven man who is desperately searching for a long-lost cousin in Italy. The power of Il Destino, Destiny, brings together Joey and Jeanette, a bickering, sarcastic, mocking duo, in a yellow Mini Cooper for a thrilling and perilous journey through southern Italy. With lemons, cigars, and spiders along for the ride, the star-crossed pair end up stranded in a roadside cave unwilling to give in to their stubborn desires. But their night of timid confessions will change them in ways they never imagined. Forty years later, Joey, now Grandpa Peppe, relates his wacky and life-changing adventure to his inquisitive grandson, Little Joey, who is next in line to carry on the family legacy, with the power of love and Destiny as his guides. An intoxicating tale of romance and adventure, Summer in Italy is a heart-warming journey of love, family, and Destiny.
Please tell us about the character of Joey.
He is a cynical, bitter history teacher who has lost his only child to a fatal accident and his wife, who has given up on him and left. But that does not stop him from searching for some true meaning in his life. He loves family, so much so that he would do anything for them, even travel all the way to Italy and seek out a cousin who he has not seen in over thirty years, but believes may still live there. However, he has no real evidence or clues as to how he can find his cousin. Believing all the while that the cousin will be the link to Joey's heritage and the source that will keep the family name alive, our passionate hero does not want to give up, even when all hope seems to be lost.
What made you want to set the book in Italy?
My newfound love for all things Italian. I was born in New York into a loving, working class Italian-American family. And for many years, my Italian heritage did not stretch beyond the shores of Long Island. But then, in 2008, something incredibly wonderful happened that changed all that. A reunion with two long-lost Italian cousins of whom I did not see for thirty-two years took place. This was approximately one year after my father's death, when Cousins John Mastrogiulio and Joseph Mastrogiulio found a forgotten letter written many years earlier by my father and was able to locate my family. After meeting them only once in 1976, I had believed my cousins were living in Italy all that time. But they were actually in Brooklyn, New York. When the families finally became reunited, a green-white-and-red light bulb went off at the top of my head. All I could think about were all those summers my cousins had spent with their family (my family too) in Italy while they were actually growing up in Brooklyn. This motivated me to travel to Italy, embrace my Italian heritage, and write our story. I immediately fell in love with Italy during my first visit in the spring of 2009. And I began a writer's journey, eating and drinking and writing my way through the country, writing about everything and anything that I was absorbing, about this rich and wonderful culture I had been missing out on for so many years. I knew I had to write and publish my story after seeing Italy with my own eyes, hearing it with my own ears, and tasting it with my own lips. And since 2009, the home of my ancestors, beautiful Italy has rekindled my love of music, art, architecture, and so much more. It has convinced my wife and me that nothing could ever be more important than family, wherever they come from, wherever they are, wherever they might travel. I have been to Italy three times now, and I can't imagine never going back. It's in my blood, and it beckons me ever on to the land of my people. It's what I write about.
Why does our past stay with us even if we try to forget?
Because our past is who we are. It contains memories that are not made up of a single image belonging to just one of the five senses. The images of the past come to us sometimes through our eyes, or sometimes our ears, or our nose. Or it could be a combination of a few senses that remind us of that memory. If I smell just one honeysuckle flower today, I will immediately be transported back to my youth, and the church yard where I played. Back then, I would break off one delicate flower and pull out the slightly sticky nectar and let it sit on my tongue. I could do that all day. Honeysuckle flowers will always mean church yard to me, even when I try to remember the bad or scary things that happened to me in that church yard, like when I fell down those concrete stairs. I tumbled over and over, losing all sense of balance, and smashing my head on those rock-hard stairs. But church yard still means honeysuckle to me, and that means good. And good always triumphs over bad. So I remember the good, and my past stays with me. But there is so much more that is deeper than just a scent or a taste that makes us remember. Why does honeysuckle equal church yard equal good for me? Because I grew up in that church yard. I shared love and hate, and all kinds of passion with family and friends in that church yard. I daydreamed in that churchyard, with honeysuckle nectar on my tongue. I fantasized about traveling around the world and thought up imaginary characters in that church yard, with honeysuckle on my tongue. And so it stays with me. Even when I try to forget that I lost my best friend years ago. My best friend, the one for whom I saved all of my secrets. He and I grew up in that church yard, and his passing dealt me a great blow. I want to forget that he is gone, but I can't. And the church yard makes me remember. It is part of who I am, like all of my memories. Family, friends, love, and loss, the connections we make in our lives, the memories we all have that make us who we are.
The book has been compared to When Harry Met Sally and Indiana Jones so how does that make you feel?
Incredible! Awesome! Speechless! Indiana Jones has been a hero of mine ever since Raiders of the Lost Ark blasted on the big screen in 1981. He is the ultimate American hero, what every woman wants in a man. Indy is funny, handsome, sexy, and even awkward, and gets himself in a jam every time. But with his knowledge, wit, and strength, he always conquers the bad guys and wins the day. For my character Joey to be compared to my hero Indiana Jones is like me and the Little League baseball team I played on in my neighbourhood growing up in Queens, New York being compared to Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees. It's like apple pie being compared to crème Brule. But the world is now telling me that my Little League baseball team is something truly wonderful and has real merit, and that I should be just as proud about being a part of it as Derek Jeter is about his career and his New York Yankees. And hey, when could apple pie ever be wrong? Right? The other amazing part of that comparison involves When Harry Met Sally, an incredibly funny and sensitive story that touches my heart every time I see it. It's set in New York, my hometown, and I can't help but feeling drawn to the wacky characters and their fated relationships. This is what happens to Joey and Jeanette in Summer in Italy. To think that my two characters could be one of those wacky couples that gets together in When Harry Met Sally makes me realize that I have created something, through my subconscious perhaps, that is at once as familiar and fun to readers as that timeless film classic is to millions and millions of viewers. And that maybe one day, many, many readers will feel the same way about my book as all those viewers feel about that movie. Put that together with Indiana Jones, and that is a dream come true for me.
Why is the romance in the book so timeless?
Because the power of Il Destino, Destiny, triumphs over all things. Joey and Jeanette were fated to be together forever. Neither one knew it on that plane ride to Rome in 1977, but it had to happen. They had to meet at the car rental window, and then bicker, laugh, and cry together. If one thing had happened in a different place in the order of things to happen, or it hadn't happened at all, or a different thing had happened instead, it never would have worked out like it had. But it did happen, just as Destiny had planned, so that they could find themselves, and the things that were missing in their lives. They needed to change, to become the true people that were hiding inside. It took Destiny to do that. And once they had changed, they would never go back to their old suspicious, untrusting selves. Forty years later, they are still madly in love with one another, and Joey, now Peppe, has the family for whom he has always dreamed. Destiny brought Joey and Jeanette together. And Destiny is timeless.
Why will reader be hooked from the first page?
Because on page one the reader is given the background of the whole story, forty years of something, a transformation, a metamorphosis, something that had happened that had changed Joey to Peppe, and had brought Jeanette into his life, a life they still share after forty years. But it is just a hint of that background, and if the reader wants to know how it all transpired, he has to read on.
What is next for you?
I'm working on my second novel. I call it The Matchmaker. It's about a travel writer from New York who is engaged to be married. One week before his wedding, he bets his buddies he can go anywhere in the world with almost no money and only his cell phone and passport, and working for his ticket, return to New York in time for his wedding. With the toss of a dart and the help of the mysterious and whimsical Matchmaker, our hero ends up in Venice, and that's where his real story begins. I had the idea for the story on my last trip to Italy. It was my last day of a ten-day visit, to Rome, Naples, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, and finally Venice. That's where I got the idea. As my two sisters, my wife and myself were heading from our 550-year-old hotel to the small pier with our luggage, I spotted three brown paper bags filled with old Italian magazines waiting for the trash boat. I picked through that trash and stashed away three of those magazines. That was the idea, a man finding old magazines in Venice. The story is all laid out, and now I'm writing the beginning chapters. Having my first book, Summer in Italy published, and now with promoting it, I have been making small gains with The Matchmaker. But it is starting to pick up. I hope to have it published by the spring or summer of 2015.
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