Having come from grandparents who immigrated to the Santa Clara Valley from Italy in the early 1900s, I was especially interested in reading Debra Korbel’s historical novel based, in part, on her own family’s journey to the Valley from the Azores. What I found in the pages of this book, through the lives of her characters, was as captivating as it was moving. It is a saga, creatively told, of those who, out of sheer desperation, embarked into the unknown, facing untold danger and grave losses only to triumph in the end as they continued to push forward and find their way, each encountering an inner journey by which they discover a kind of peace, all their own.
