A Bench on Which to Rest: The Diary of an Emigrant

By Elena Maccaferri

Climene, an Italian emigrant, who travels to Canada in the 1930s copes with losses and hardships as she tries to raise a family and find success, but yearns for her true love and her ancestral village... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1928746020
• ISBN13: 9781928746027
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Herodias
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A Bench on Which to Rest

I'm the daughter of Italian immigrants. I read this slim book many years after they had passed on. I never realized how difficult it had been for them and most of the people who had immigrated from Italy to the U.S.A. This story of a young girl with a young love in Italy, and how her life was interrupted when an Italo-American who visited her area with a glib tongue and, supposedly a large wallet, talked her parents into allowing him to marry her. Her parents thought their daughter would live a rich life in America, but it was all a lie. We follow her life until her first love finds her well past middle age. She sits on her bench and reflects on her life and chooses to stay in it. She has children and has worked hard. Any child of Italian immigrants will be touched by the simplicity of this book. We just never knew how difficult it had been for them. The book went from hand-to-hand and traveled quite far. I lost track of it, and I'm relieved that I found it was still available. This is a wonderful book for a reading group, and any first-generation American can relate to it.