Umbertina’s determination to leave a world of oppression, deprivation, and hopelessness leads her to accept willingly and without hesitation marriage to a much older husband, whom she does not love romantically but grows to respect and care for as the trusted companion of her life. Yet after his death, Serafino is the one commemorated for the family’s economic success, while Umbertina is only mentioned as his “good companion” (128). She is not even a partner in the enterprise of Serafino Longobardi & Sons, which she has so single-handedly masterminded. The illiterate Umbertina starts out by selling freshly made panini and pizza for her husband’s co-workers, keeping “the men’s orders in her mind” thanks to her “great powers of concentration and a memory that took the place of reading and writing” (94). Encouraged by the profits her hard work reaps, she opens a spaccio—a space—in a storefront (95). After leasing a piece of farmland to grow her own provisions and purchasing a horse and wagon, Umbertina shrewdly transforms the spaccio into the Longobardi groceria, and later creates an importing business, a steamship agency, and a bank: she manages to build an economic security that protects her family even from the devastation of the Depression. Barolini’s character thus follows a rags-to-riches journey, fulfilling—to all appearances, at least—the so-called American Dream.