Finding Filomena: Alla Ricerca di Filomena

Can we use storytelling to come to terms with the pain and sorrow inherited from our ancestors? For as long as I can remember, a dark secret shadowed my father’s family. But after my grandmother and her sisters passed, my cousin found, in an old family trunk, the photo that appears on the cover of this book. The secret was out! My great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, was born out of wedlock in 1870 to his unwed mother, Filomena Scrivano, in the southern Italian province of Calabria. In English, the name Scrivano means “scribe,” but in this fictional memoir I take on the job of scribe for my ancestor’s tale of woe. It’s the story that Filomena Scrivano “channeled” through me to tell the tale of her love affair with the mysterious man who is responsible for producing our enormous Orzo clan – one that today numbers hundreds of descendants from Connecticut to California. In my imagination, “Finding Filomena” restores dignity to my ancestor’s reputation and obliterates the endless shame that was handed down from Pasquale Orzo to my grandmother and her five sisters, as well as to their offspring. This fictional memoir solves another important mystery: how is it that our illegitimate ancestor managed to survive, when in his region of Italy in 1870 a horrifying 93% of babies born out of wedlock died in foundling homes operated by the Catholic Church? Read this wild and fast-paced tale to find out!