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by Mario Tosto (Author)
By the time we meet our parents, it's too late to know them fully. Life has already started to change them from the people they believed themselves to be before we came into their lives.Before converging in an arranged marriage, the lives of Carmelo Tosto and Natala (Nellie) Cascio were on divergent paths. Carmelo's history is particularly sparse as his documentation originates at an institution for abandoned infants in Catania, Sicily in 1901. He grew up in a nearby fishing village and at the age of fourteen went to work as a merchant marine sailor until 1925 when he jumped ship in Baltimore to escape Mussolini's naval conscription. Nellie was born in Sicily but came to America as an infant. She grew up with serious aspirations to become a Catholic nun. Though there's much more evidence of her early life, I felt her character and story needed some enhancement. After diligent gleaning using today's powerful internet search tools, I amassed a trove of facts about them, even Carmelo. I added to those findings whatever I could collect from personal reminiscences, family lore, and some artifacts. Though it was exciting to see the early days of my long-gone parents taking shape in my mind, it was also frustrating. Like scrapbooks retrieved from a flood, the tide of time had dissolved much detail about them. As the first fruit of their convergence, I didn't know them personally until they were well into their thirties. By then, like most of us, they had changed markedly from their youthful personas. I felt the best way to present their story was to assemble my collection of fact fragments with the connective tissue of fiction. So, I invented much of the material, most of which is based on plausible inferences from the facts. That's why I consider it a novel and not a biography.Novels don't usually include notes, but I included many in the "NOTES" section at the back of the book. Some of these will resonate with my family. Some will add more dimension to the narrative. And, for those interested, some will identify most of the differences between fact and fiction. I hope none are necessary for the advancement and enjoyment of the story. In writing this book, my parents became more fascinating and more charming to me than when we made each other miserable in the 1940s and 1950s. I hope this book will help you appreciate them better than I did then, and as much as I do now.
