CanioÕs Secret: A Memoir of Ethnicity, Electricity, and my Immigrant GrandfatherÕs Wisdom

CanioÕs Secret: A Memoir of Ethnicity, Electricity, and my Immigrant GrandfatherÕs WisdomIn 1950s Chicago, a boy hides in his closet to escape a fathers habitual rage. There he conjures up another paternal figure in his artistic Italian grandfather, Canio Grieco. With his wondrous tricks and stories of Italy, his library and drawings, his baseball and opera, Canio becomes the model of creativity for the lonely, introverted grandson who learns to survive through ingenuity, imagination, and electricity. Canios Secret is a coming of age

In 1950s Chicago, a boy hides in his closet to escape a fatherÕs habitual rage. There he conjures up another paternal figure in his artistic Italian grandfather, Canio Grieco. With his wondrous tricks and stories of ÒItaly,Ó his library and drawings, his baseball and opera, Canio becomes the model of creativity for the lonely, introverted grandson who learns to survive through ingenuity, imagination, and electricity.

CanioÕs Secret is a coming-of-age story about young GregÕs struggle to find solace in his motherÕs Catholicism and break free of his fatherÕs anger. Told through intimate portraits of parents and grandparents, nuns and janitors, friends and local characters, and their unsettling, often humorous, encounters, it is also the vibrant portrait of a multi-ethnic neighborhood soon to be scattered by white flight. As the older writer ponders his grandfatherÕs influence, the memoir becomes a meditation on CanioÕs enigmatic advice, spoken in the summer of 1953: ÒHappiness is all thatÕs required.Ó