Description:

efore The Godfather and The Last Don, there was Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, and with a new preface by the author, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best. Originally published in 1965, *The Fortunate Pilgrim* by Mario Puzo, was the novel that preceded his mega bestseller, *The Godfather*. This saga of Italian-American immigrants concerns Lucia Santa and her six children in New York's Hell's Kitchen beginning in the years before the Depression. Each child makes a choice in the name of assimilation, including her oldest son, who becomes involved with the Mafia.