The Coming of Fabrizze (Black Squirrel Books)

First published in 1960, "The Coming of Fabrizze" has been called by the "New York Herald Tribune" a 'comic folklore festival about an Italian American colony in Cleveland, Ohio, back in the 1920s when all the land was a little slaphappy - and no one more so than these transplanted countrymen of the Medicis, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christopher Columbus...and others whose hearts have belonged to Italia'. More a myth or a legend than a realistic novel or sociological novel, "Fabrizze" is a celebration of the working class and a heroic tale of an immigrant who succeeds by virtue of hard work and honesty. Author Raymond DeCapite's characterizations of Italian Americans in Cleveland have been compared to the depictions of Armenian Americans in the early writing of William Saroyan, and Ann Ross of the "New York Herald Tribune" said that DeCapite's 'greatest achievement is his ability to achieve tenderness without sentimentality'.