Of Saints and Wooden Nickels: An American Story

When my father was just sixteen years old, he stole several hundred dollars from a family member and took a train with a friend from Chicago to New York, where they procured fake baptismal certificates and subsequently a fake passports. From there, they sailed to Italy aboard a steamer. My dad was in search of a family secret. Along the way, all of his money and his passport were stolen, and there he was: an American teenager alone, adrift in Mussolini's Italy without papers. After a year o...