The Fortunate Pilgrim
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Before the Corleones ever cast their long shadow over American literature, Mario Puzo gave the world Lucia Santa — a fiercely determined Italian immigrant mother navigating the brutal tenements of Hell's Kitchen, New York, in the 1920s and 30s — and in doing so, wrote what many consider his true masterpiece. The Fortunate Pilgrim chronicles the extraordinary struggle of a woman who sacrifices everything to hold her fractured family together against the crushing tides of poverty, cultural displacement, and the seductive pull of a new world that threatens to swallow her children whole. Puzo writes with a raw, operatic intensity that transforms the immigrant experience into something timeless and mythic, drawing on his own Italian-American upbringing to render each character with aching authenticity. The novel stands as a profound meditation on sacrifice, identity, and the violent collision between Old World honour and New World ambition — themes Puzo would later amplify on a grand scale in The Godfather. Readers who discover this earlier work will find themselves wondering how one author could contain such depth twice — and which world, Hell's Kitchen or the Corleone empire, truly reveals the darker heart of the American dream.
Author: Mario Puzo
Format: Paperback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Before the Corleones ever cast their long shadow over American literature, Mario Puzo gave the world Lucia Santa — a fiercely determined Italian immigrant mother navigating the brutal tenements of Hell's Kitchen, New York, in the 1920s and 30s — and in doing so, wrote what many consider his true masterpiece. The Fortunate Pilgrim chronicles the extraordinary struggle of a woman who sacrifices everything to hold her fractured family together against the crushing tides of poverty, cultural displacement, and the seductive pull of a new world that threatens to swallow her children whole. Puzo writes with a raw, operatic intensity that transforms the immigrant experience into something timeless and mythic, drawing on his own Italian-American upbringing to render each character with aching authenticity. The novel stands as a profound meditation on sacrifice, identity, and the violent collision between Old World honour and New World ambition — themes Puzo would later amplify on a grand scale in The Godfather. Readers who discover this earlier work will find themselves wondering how one author could contain such depth twice — and which world, Hell's Kitchen or the Corleone empire, truly reveals the darker heart of the American dream.