In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu: A Novel

by Tony Ardizzone

In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu is a magical, warm, and wise novel about a close-knit family's immigration from Sicily to America in the early 1900s. Wanting more for their children and grandchildren than a lifetime of servitude in the fields of a tyrannical Sicilian landlord, Papa Santuzzu and his wife, Adriana, push their seven sons and daughters, one by one, to immigrate to La Merica, a land of promise and opportunity. Here is a rich and vibrant novel about the stories families tell each other, stories that make up a deeply personal and a common history.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1999

About the author

Tony Ardizzone was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. He is the author of seven books of fiction, including The Arab’s Ox, an updated edition of his previously published interconnected collection of stories set in Morocco, Larabi’s Ox. The February 2018 release of The Arab’s Ox marks the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication. Ardizzone is also the author of four novels: The Whale Chaser, In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, Heart of the Order, and In the Name of the Father. His short story collections include The Evening News and Taking It Home: Stories from the Neighborhood.

Ardizzone has been awarded two Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Prize, the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction sponsored by the Friends of Literature, the Virginia Prize for Fiction, the Pushcart Prize, the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award, the Black Warrior Review Literary Award in Fiction, and the Cream City Review Editors' Award in Nonfiction.

Ardizzone also edited the anthology The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop. Previously he served as the managing editor of three volumes of the Intro series, published by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. After the series became dormant, as a member of AWP’s Board of Directors Ardizzone founded and launched the organization’s Intro Journals Project and served as its managing editor for the project’s first two years. In 2010 he wrote the foreword to the newly released paperback edition of Raymond DeCapite's classic novel The Coming of Fabrizze.

Reviews

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tony Ardizzone's beautiful prose evokes the voice of the people he depicts. This book is wonderful on so many levels. I like the sense of hope in these characters juxtaposed against the harsh reality that so many immigrants face. Still, it's not heavy with sadness. There is beauty in the way each character brings their lives to the new world infusing the novel with Sicilian culture and folklore. It's all told in first person, but through the voices of many different characters. I want to read it again.

[Clarissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, also it is a novel it seems to portray the struggle of the emigration from Italy but specifically from Sicily to USA. It capture very well the atmosphere both in Sicily leading to the emigration and the struggle in USA to find jobs, create a life.

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[MJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will not neatly fall into a particular category and therefore may prevent it from universally appealing to all readers. For me it was rich in unlocking secrets from the Italian immigrant tradition that has for too long gone unwritten. As readers we are constantly warned of a string one must never let go of, if you have never held fast to this string you may not be able to love this book.

[Camille Cusumano · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author captures beautifully the Sicilian mythology our forebears sing to us. The first chapter, Field of Stone, is one of the most lyrical pieces on Sicilia: "Back when we all were the great-grandchildren of Adam and Eve, Sicilia was a young, ripe fig. Her fields burst with wheat, rice, olives, sugar, every kind of fruit. It's said that the most delicious sausages hung from her trees." Need I say more?

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a sentence by sentence level of the prose and on a narrative level, this book is beautiful. Ardizzone weaves the stories of first generation Sicilian immigrants--siblings and their spouses--with the threads of magical realism to create a novel in which the family is the protagonist.

[Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously under-rated novel. Lyrical and mesmerizing, these whimsical stories, void of sentiment or judgement, lingers in one's mind, like a glass of full-bodied wine would on your tongue.