JENN McKINLAY: One of my favorite authors, Ellen Byron, is visiting today but she is appearing as her alter ego Maria DiRico to introduce us to her brand new Catering Hall mystery series! I was lucky enough to read and advance copy and called it "A fresh, fun, and fabulous debut to what promises to be a fantastic new mystery series!" Here's Ellen/Maria to tell us more about what inspired this series. Also, she's offering a giveaway! One lucky commenter will be randomly chosen to receive a copy. Don't miss out!
Ellen: The relationship between my protagonist and her “nonna” in my new Catering Hall Mysteries is central to the series. This reflects my wonderful luck of having been raised with two strong women as role models – my mother and grandmother, both Italian immigrants.
They came from a picturesque town called Orsogna in the Abruzzo region, immigrating to America in 1930, just in time for the Great Depression. Here’s a photo taken shortly after their arrival. The stuffed animal was a prop. Mom says she screamed bloody murder when she had to return it to the photographer.
Life was hard for the new arrivals. They ate rotten fruit that shops discarded. For a treat, mother would pick up lollipops or gum kids dropped on the street. My grandfather, who I never knew, scraped together whatever jobs he could. Nonna found piecemeal work crocheting rosettes for baby’s hats. She and my mother would pick up a gross of the hats from a factory in Queens and carry them back to whatever apartment they were living in at the time. Nonna was paid $1.50 per gross. Mom says that because of this, she’s never forgotten that a gross equals 144. It’s emblazoned on her brain.
Eventually my grandfather got a job with the city as a sewer cleaner. Nonna went to work in a factory doing sewing piecework, meaning she was paid per finished piece. It wasn’t easy but Papa and Nonna managed to save enough money to buy this two-family home in Astoria.
Meanwhile, Mom carved her own path. She trained herself to speak without the thick New York/Italian accent of her family and got a job as a secretary in Manhattan. Raised by her father to love reading and the arts, she shared that passion with her younger cousins. Here she is with her late cousin Antoinette, who once told me that the times she spent exploring the Big Apple with Mom were some of the happiest memories of her life.
Italy is considered a matriarchal society. The power of the women in my immediate and extended Italian family was proof positive of that. Besides my nonna and mother, there were the cousins who came over from Italy with barely any schooling, saved their pennies, and bought buildings in Astoria that made them millionaires. One cousin, the first in the family to attend college, became a doctor. Years later, her mother, who had arrived in America at the age of fifteen after surviving the horrors of World War II, did the exact same thing.
Mom used to sing to me an old Orsognese song that went
"Le donne di Orsogna sono le più belle." Translation: the
women of Orsogna are the prettiest. They're also the smartest,
most resourceful women around, and I and so proud to share
their genes and history.
By the way, "Maria DiRico," my pen name, was Nonna's
maiden name. Viva le donne di Orsogna!
So, how about it, Reds and Readers, have your parents and grandparents influenced your writing or your life? Where did they come from and how has it influenced you?
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BIO: Maria DiRico is the pen name of mystery author Ellen Byron, who is first-generation Italian American on her mother’s side. MARDI GRAS MURDER, the fourth book in Ellen's bestselling Cajun Country Mystery series, won the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. The series has also won multiple Best Humorous Mystery Lefty awards. TV credits include Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. Fun fact: she worked as cater-waiter for Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. Maria/Ellen loves to translate what she learned from Martha into recipes for her books. You can reach her at:
https://www.facebook.com/CateringHallMysteries/
