Other America

font-family:AGaramond´>The Other America is an epic drama of an extraordinary
family: of Rosa and Giovanni Manzino who flee 11.0pt;font-family:AGaramond´>Sicilyfont-family:AGaramond´> for AGaramond´>New York
at the turn of the century and their eldest son Gino who carries a secret
legacy and builds an empire in the AGaramond´>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.

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style=´font-family:AGaramond´>Letter to the Reader

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font-family:AGaramond´> 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.

font-family:AGaramond´> 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.

font-family:AGaramond´> 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.

font-family:AGaramond´> 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
s