The Caruso family had been fortunate. From Naples they’d taken the Hohenzollern—the German ships were best, his father said—and they’d crossed the Atlantic in less than ten days. It had been crowded, down in steerage. The smell of the latrines almost made him throw up, and the throbbing of the engines, his mother said, was a punishment sent by God. But there had been no storms during the crossing, and they were allowed up on deck to get the fresh air for an hour every day. His mother had brought food—ham and salami, olives, dried fruit, even bread, tightly wrapped in napkins—that had lasted through the voyage. Each evening Uncle Luigi had led the singing of Neapolitan songs, like “Finiculi, Finicula,” in his soft tenor voice.

There were eight of them altogether: his parents, his mother’s brother, Uncle Luigi, and the five children. Giuseppe was the eldest, fifteen years old, strongly built like his father, a good worker. All the children looked up to Giuseppe, but being so much older, he was somewhat apart. Two other little boys had not been so strong, and died in infancy. So the next in line was Anna. She was nine. Then came Paolo, Salvatore, and little Maria, who was just three.

As the ship passed through the narrows into the waters of New York harbor, the deck was crowded. Everyone was excited. And little Salvatore would have been happy too, if he hadn’t discovered a terrible secret.

His mother was holding little Maria by the hand. Until Maria came along, Salvatore had been the baby of the family. But now he had someone to look up to him, and it was his job to protect her. He liked to play with his baby sister and to show her things.

His mother was wearing a black coat against the cold. Most of the women had their heads covered with a white shawl, but despite the winter weather, his mother had put on her best hat. It was black also, with a tattered little veil and a limp artificial flower on the brim. Salvatore had heard that once there had been two flowers, but this was before he was born. He understood that she was wearing her hat now so that the Americans should see that the family were people of some standing.

Concetta Caruso was short and dark and fiercely proud. She knew that the people of her village were superior to the people of the neighboring villages, and that the Italian south, the Mezzogiorno, was finer than all the other lands of the world, whatever they might be. She did not know what people of other nations ate, and did not care. For Italian food was best.

She knew also that, whichever of the saints she asked to help her, God saw all the sins of the world, and that He would decide whether any mercy was to be shown.