Becoming Mariella

For fans of Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults and Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation comes a contemporary coming-of-age tale about a beautiful young Italian immigrant’s journey to find her own personal freedom and fulfillment—and love.

It’s unprecedented, even in the 21st century, for a young Sicilian woman to defy the ancient Italian mandate, “Family is everything!”—but 22-year-old Mariella Russo is desperate to escape Sicily. She’s being relentlessly coerced into an engagement with her wealthy college sweetheart—a young man from a prominent, powerful family—by her envious, erratic mother, who hopes the match will elevate her own social status. Sicily, Mariella’s beloved lifelong homeland, becomes a claustrophobic island. In a sudden bid for independence, she flees to San Francisco with her Nonna’s (grandmother’s) help.

But Mariella’s bête noire—entrapment—and the unexpected— follows her to America, where her roommate, Leslie, turns out to be a gay man rather than the young woman she imagined; her new employer/lover is pressuring her to move in; and her neurotic mother haunts her, wreaking havoc. When an urgent return trip to Sicily puts Mariella to the ultimate test, will she submit to tradition or choose the life she wants for herself?