Wild Was the Road

New York: Vantage Press. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1963). First Edition. Hardcover. [some visible wear to boards along bottom edges, at both ends of spine, and corners, faint dust-soiling to top edge of text block; jacket edgeworn, rubbed, and lightly soiled, with a few tiny nicks and tears, 1-inch horizontal scrape on front panel, one 2-inch closed tear at bottom front hinge]. Vanity-press novel tracing "the history of an Italian family through two world wars, chronicling its triumphs and agonies, its material poverty and spiritual grandeur, its diminution and its resurrection in the new world." The author, you will not be surprised to learn, was born in Italy and drew on his family history and some of his own experiences for this novel; the jacket blurb refers to the disappearance of his brother "during the terrible retreat on the Russian front in the winter of 1942-43," the same fate suffered by a character in the novel, and to the author's own narrow escape from the Germans during the war. He subsequently relocated to San Francisco and went into the restaurant business. .