The Other America

The Other America is an epic drama of an extraordinary
family: of Rosa and Giovanni Manzino who flee Sicily for New York
at the turn of the century and their eldest son Gino who carries a secret
legacy and builds an empire in the New World.
Through five generations, in the fields of Sicily, the streets of New York and
the mansions of Connecticut, Santorelli gives us a world of passionate
intensity - a world where men carve out new space for themselves and women hold
new sway - a world both murderous and merciful, born of violence and
sacrifice, deceit and love.

Letter to the Reader

I have always been a person who has
questioned and it has gotten me into trouble many a time, with my elders and
with those who profess to know. There were times when I felt I was a wild
horse and others were trying to break me. Thank God I had the sense to keep
fighting.
It was not expected in my family that I
would write. My parents were born at the turn of the century and life in our
neighborhood in Italian Harlem was limited. Few received even a high school
education. Our social circle was strictly limited to a small circle of friends
and family who lived within a few square blocks. Strangers were treated with
distrust and girls - especially unmarried ones - were watched over by uncles,
aunts, friends and neighbors.
Although my mother, Anna DeGeorge, never
imagined more for me than marriage and family, she was a true storyteller who
set my soul aflame with tales of her early childhood and passionate
adventures. I was a young girl when I left my mother's house for my husband's
- and I had only a mile to walk to get there. Looking up, I saw a sky filled
with shadows from clouds barely moving, as if the world was still. A voice
inside whispered to me that no matter what others said or expected, my journey
would take me far beyond these short blocks. For years, I had tried to be like
the other girls. But on that moonlit night, windless and calm, my own power
began to rise up in me. I began a life-long marriage of another kind, one with
my own destiny and my own choices.
I now have a wonderful marriage, six
children and three grandchildren. I have had a rich, fulfilling life, filled
with travel and dreams coming true. Yet sometimes over the years, I have found
myself longing for something more - missing something I could not name. I felt
such guilt for this. "What kind of person am I, who has such an extraordinary
life, not to be always grateful for it?" I asked myself. My husband would say
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