"My Italian is doing okay, I think, but I'm still frustrated. There are so many things I want to ask my cousins. I want to know about their lives, what they want, what they believe in, what they think of the world, but I just don't have the vocabulary."

A son's journey leads him closer to the truth about his father in Vincent Romeo's touching debut novel, "My Villa in Calabria."

As Tony, a daytime series actor living in New York City, begins the inevitable approach toward middle age, his mother makes a most unusual request: transport his father's ashes back to Italy for a proper...

In 1950s Cleveland, Ohio, stands the Romeo family's home, and inside this home is an ordinary table at which extraordinary memories are made. There's no shortage of provisions, thanks to Mama's magic hands. Nor is there any shortage of eaters. Through these meals, author Vincent Romeo delivers the very specific and dramatic world of first-generation Italian immigrants. Papa labors at the steel mill all day and comes home to rule his domain. Mama runs the store from dawn to dusk, then makes dinner for the family. And here the memories come to life like the...