Dominic F. Gangale

LOVE REKINDLES A PASSION FOR WRITING
The year was 1960, my father and I stepped off the ‘Olympia’ ocean liner on the docks of the city of New York. Our next stop would be Cleveland, which would become our new residence.
I was eleven years old. According to the legends of American greatness, the streets in American were paved with gold. And life of an American family was a life of leisure and abundance: a life of easy living.
But America was not a land for the timid or the weak. It was a land of hungry entrepreneurs and aggressive individuals.

Upon arrival, many nights I would ask Dad if we could just go back to our small village in Italy.
The balance of our family arrived one year later. For seven kids and two adults, life was difficult. The first few years were turbulent. As if things weren’t hard enough, the kids made life very difficult for Mom and Dad. Our parents were young immigrants who carried with them the virtues of hard work and respect.
We young adolescents, quickly adapted to the changes. We had one simple request: why couldn’t we be like a normal American family?

While I was attending high school, my parents preached of the merits of finding a nice Italian girl. Italians should stick together with our own kind, they contended.
On the other hand, I fell in love with a gorgeous blue-eyed blond, we had a marvelous life. We shared all of life’s pleasures and disappointments. America did provide the abundance of wealth that she had promised, but then, wonderful things seem to happen when hard work is involved.

On June 8, 2019, I was left devastated. I began writing daily letters to my deceased wife: that was my limit of interaction with society, I could do nothing else. The daily letters were transformed into a book, The Greater the Love, the Deeper the Grieving, and my writing began. My granddaughter’s college writing inspired me to retrieve the dormant draft of Love Me Silently, a romantic novel of young love.

Sincerely.
Dominic F. Gangale