Saltport

About the Book

The twenty-seven stories in Saltport—A Town on the Erie Canal reflect social and economic issues that Americans experienced during the second half of the twentieth century. The elusiveness of the American Dream, the rapid advances of technology, and the changing roles of men and women at home and at work are just a few of the issues. The Erie Canal, once vital to the development of New York State, flows through the book as a symbol of a simple and stable time, before the middle of the last century, when working with one’s hands, communicating personally, and respecting nature were more common.

The stories include a variety of characters in the fictional town, but two Italian families dominate the collection. Although the twenty-seven stories are complete and may be read in any order, the experiences of the characters are arranged in chronological order, from youth to old age. Therefore, readers should have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the works if they are read in the order presented in the book.

The first member of the Donatelli family who arrives in the United States settles in Saltport and works in the nearby quarries as a stone cutter. In Italy his family had a wine-making business, and his dream is to continue the tradition in the United States. Poor and uneducated, he fails to achieve his dream, but he succeeds at instilling his passion in one of his sons, Vito, who also carries on the family tradition of making wine.

After his father dies, Vito and his wife, Angelina, live in his father’s sandstone house in Saltport and have four children. As a young man Vito works on the Erie Canal and, like his father, tends the vineyard behind the house and enjoys the tradition of making wine every year. His children, on the other hand, do not like the work or the wine and help him because he forces them to do so. Gino, his older son, does whatever his father expects of him and does not complain or challenge Vito in any way. His younger brother, Frank, on the other hand, rebels against a wine-making process that is impractical and a wine that is bitter. He tries to use modern methods to improve the work and the wine, but his father refuses to change.

One of the two central characters in the book, Frank attends a community college and eventually becomes an engineer. After he is laid off at Kodak, his struggle to accept his role of home-maker is revealed in “A Full-Time Father,” and the conflicts between his traditional Catholic mother and his liberated wife are shown in “Ice Storm” and “Far From Home.” Like Frank, his sister rebels against their tyrannical father. In “A Mud Turtle” she is a drug-using, overweight teenager trying to cope with her low self-esteem, and in “Hot Iron” she tries to reconcile with her father by returning home to take care of him after her mother, who no longer can tolerate his heavy drinking and verbal abuse, leaves him. Anna, the youngest of the four children, is attractive, sensitive, and artistic, and she is married to a lawyer who once loved her deeply. However, in “A Three-Legged Puppy” her marriage and relationship with her children are falling apart, and she tries to figure out a way to find the man she married.

The head of the other Italian family is Aberto Grillo, a self-employed carpenter who enters the United States in 1926 and hopes to achieve the American dream of a good job and a house of his own. After working hard most of his life, he finally is able to buy a house on a small farm. His son works the land, and his grandson, Joe, the other central character in the collection, also wants to be a farmer. “On an Expressway” and “A Special Night” are about the consequences of his decision to abandon his dream. In the first story he lacks the money to buy a farm, and in the second he cannot earn enough money to support his family. Nevertheless, he decides to take up the challenge again because his life