At the close of the novel, as Tina pieces together the “fragments” (392) of her memory of the trip like the colorful parts of a quilt, Barolini skillfully ties together two important strands of Italian culture: Persephone, who is referred to in the prologue, and Dante, who appears prominently in the final section.34 Tina, who at times sees herself as an incarnation of her Persephone-like mother, must learn to trace her mother’s steps in a symbolic descent into hell. This is a hell from which she comes back, like Persephone, but also like Dante, the pilgrim of the Commedia who returns from his journey to tell the story.35 In Barolini’s novel, Dante does not embody a literary tradition that was truly foreign to Italian American immigrants, but rather represents one gate through which an Italian American woman can begin to explore and incorporate Italian mythologies and histories into Italian American cultural life.

Traveling, which for Tina at first signifies “a reprieve from all the choices . . . belonging nowhere, having no past, no future” (347), becomes the means by which she finds her place, a sense of multiple cultural “belonging,” a connection to her past and a key to her future. It is through Tina that we come to a better understanding of Marguerite’s story, a story that her daughters can learn from the diaries she has left. Like many Italian American women writers, Marguerite is the first college-educated woman in her family.36 In this century, access to literacy has made it possible for Italian American women to write their stories and the stories of their female ancestors, those who first crossed the borders and made the development of Italian American culture possible.

Umbertina explores crossings—geographical, cultural, social, chronological, ethnic—and the ways in which those who cross borders can learn to use their mutable identities as the rich soil for creative and transformative work. In telling the story of the Longobardi women and of the lost—and found—bedspread, Barolini has captured a larger history that could itself easily be lost. Ultimately, the one who ties everything together is the author herself, as she weaves a narrative fabric as radiant, evocative, and powerful as the design adorning Umbertina’s coperta.