Finding Filomena is now available as an ebook on on Amazon.com and also, on Kobo.com.

An old black and white photo of a young woman, buried in a family trunk. Whispers over the years among my grandmother and her five sisters.

For as long as I can remember, there was a dark secret in my father's family. But once my grandmother and all her sisters had passed, the secret was out: my great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, was born out of wedlock in 1870 to a poor young woman named Filomena Scrivano, who lived in the southern province of Calabria in a small seaside town called Paola.

In English, the name Scrivano means "scribe," but in this novel, I take on the job of scribe for my ancestor's love story, one that was “channeled” through me after I visited the tiny seaside town of Paola and met dear Great Great Grandma — Bis Bis Nonna, in Italian — in an old seaside cafe in 2023.

Finding Filomena, the book that resulted, is now available as an ebook on Amazon.com and Kobo.com. Not only does the book identify the man Filomena fell in love with, the man who is responsible for producing the enormous Orzo clan – one which today numbers hundreds of descendants from Connecticut to California – the novel also solves perhaps an even bigger mystery:

A little-known, and thoroughly appalling, fact is that for centuries in Italy (and in all other Catholic countries in Europe) illegitimate babies were routinely taken away from their mothers and housed in “ospizios,” horrible foundling homes where the babies usually perished before the age of one, principally because hired wet nurses transmitted disease from infant to another.

According to a well-researched book called Sacrificed for Honor, by Brown University historian David Kertzer, hundreds of thousands of babies died because of this monstrous practice. In 1870, in the region of Calabria where Pasquale Orzo was born, a horrifying 93 percent of the illegitimate babies died, according to Kertzer, leaving us asking the question: how did the "miraculo" (miracle) happen? How is it that our illegitimate ancestor Pasquale Orzo managed to survive?

For years and years, my family members have traded countless emails and conversations, always asking the same question: who was Pasquale’s father? Some speculated that Filomena’s lover was a nobleman from the north of Italy. Others suggested he was a rich businessman. Or a member of the Swiss Guard, the elite military assigned to the Pope.

In writing my novel, it was my intention to restore dignity to Filomena Scrivano’s reputation. I also wanted to try to erase the endless shame that was handed down from Pasquale Orzo to my grandmother, Albina Orzo Ricci, and her five Orzo sisters, as well as to their offspring.

What I didn’t realize until Filomena began to come alive as a character for me, is that this book is a dramatic coming-of-age story for a young woman who was born into a situation with absolutely no horizons, no opportunity, no possibility of escape. When she meets the charming Giovanni Masiero, her world opens up. Filomena realizes not only the possibility of love, but she is also exposed to Giovanni’s cultured world, where she finds herself as an artist (a writer, like her name suggests) and as a strong, independent woman. Filomena finds the inner resources to survive and ultimately, to transcend the tragedy of her circumstances. At the end of the book, Filomena and her best friend Nunzi actually come up with a marvelous way to help other young women who become pregnant and are in danger of having their babies taken away.

PICTURED ABOVE: Pasquale Orzo and his wife, Caterina, with six of his ten children. My grandmother, Albina, is standing to the right of her mother.

Some readers have asked how I came to write this story. To be absolutely honest, I really didn’t do the choosing. Like so much of the best fiction, the story was delivered to me by mysterious means. Moreover, as I will reveal in later posts, I received ample help in writing the book from my dear parents, Ric and Dena Ricci, who passed away before I wrote the book. I know, I know, how weird, right? But trust me, I have kept careful notes on the help they delivered.

Of course I received help from living relatives as well. First and foremost, I owe so much to my first cousin, Donna Ricci (her father and mine were brothers), who has done an enormous amount of important genealogical research on the Orzo family over the years. Indeed, it was Donna who inherited that trunk from our grandmother Albina Orzo Ricci’s younger sister, Lisette Orzo DiPinto. It was Donna who found the only photo that we have of Filomena Scrivano, the one that graces the book’s cover. On the back of the photo was a date, 23 Ottobre 1919,

and just a couple of lines of script: Filomena Scrivano Pera was presenting the photo “al mio caro figlio Pasquale,” to her dear son Pasquale. Beneath Filomena’s handwriting, my grandmother Albina identified Filomena Scrivano as her “Paternal grandmother.” In other words, Filomena is my grandmother’s grandmother.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in writing this book is that it ended up helping me tap into a whole new identity. As I explain in the book, growing up, I never felt much pride in my Italian-American heritage. But in the course of writing this book, and traveling to southern Italy to research it, I discovered not only that I love Italy (which was always true), but also that I love being Italian, I love hearing and learning and speaking the language and I love learning the country’s unusual history.

In other words, I have become passionate about being Italian American!

I have lots more I can say about the book. For now, though, I have my feet up and I am enjoying the fact that I “found” Filomena. As I say at the end of the book, “I’m done for now, but should our dear Great Great Grandma Filomena have more to tell me, I will be ready, and eagerly waiting to hear what she has to say.”