pstrongFrom Calabria to Connecticut a sweeping family saga about sisterhood, secrets, Italian immigration, the American dream, and one woman's tenacious fight against her own fatestrongppFor Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella's childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents--moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella's own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted.ppIn her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity--beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life's harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.ppWhen the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new worl