Title: Salupo’s Groceries
Author: Laurel and Nick Salupo
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 1664170952
Genre: Historical Non-Fiction
Pages: 182
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
Salupo’s Groceries by authors Laurel and Nick Salupo, is a vivid and memorable account of three generations in the life of an Italian-American family. It is also the true story of the enduring love between Nicolo Salupo and his wife and soul mate, Carolina.
In many ways the Salupo memoir is the story of America and of what has made this country great. Nicolo Salupo is the first of his Sicilian family to make it over to these shores. He and his new wife Carolina, already pregnant with their first child, endure a rough passage to America, via Canada and then Buffalo. With some help from their far- flung cousins, the Salupos land on their feet in Cleveland and earnestly begin growing roots.
Nicolo is a human ‘wheelbarrow’ who works long hours dependably carting bricks and lumber across construction sites as Cleveland, and the rest of America expands and digs in. At the same time, because they are tough and prescient and wise, the young couple invests in the future by building and then running a grocery store attached to their home. This chronicle of tough challenges and great opportunities for immigrants to America includes heartbreaking passages about the death of the first two Salupo babies, fallen victim to whooping cough (this is in the 1920s, prior to the advent of mass-scale antibiotics.)
Nicolo and Carolina are in it for the long haul. They bear up under the squall and find solace and renewed purpose in each other, in their newfound country, and in their devout Catholic faith. Four healthy children: Ross, Mary, Sammy, and Jennie, each strong and loving, then arrive, and the Salupos feel truly blessed. The sumptuous descriptions of family dinners, of the feasts of lemon chicken, pastas, olives and cannoli, of the joy and serenity surrounding this happy family, are genuine. This is real love, served up plentifully, Italian-American style. (The book is 100% true.)
Things get even better as the Salupo children marry successfully and go on to have their children. World War II comes and goes with no casualties for the Salupos. But all bets are off when a young thug tries to rob the grocery, beating Carolina unconscious and gunning down Nicolo. This encounter with the city crime of America leaves the Salupo family grief-stricken, although there is some vindication in the ultimate capture and capital punishment of the killer.
Salupo’s Groceries is a feast of history, of memory, and is a testament to love that ‘surpasseth’ understanding and survives from one generation to the next.
