The year was 1921, the place Ellis Island. My maternal grandmother, single, arrives into port from Napoli on the ship Patria to be with her sister Concetta, living in Brooklyn. My grandfather, who had come to America in 1911 from Marche, had recently lost his young wife to the 1918 flu epidemic and needed a mother for his then 5-year-old son Nelson. They somehow found each other in the sea of Italian immigrants that had arrived in the new world.

Continue reading Tracing our Roots: Neapolitan Sugo di Pomodoro at Our Italian Table.