A first book. A lifetime in the making.
Some stories wait
until we’re ready.
Domenico Zagaroli grew up on a family farm in a little-known region of Italy. His childhood was rooted in a particular place: the land his family worked, the food it produced, and the everyday habits that gave family life its shape. The cooking he remembers came from what was grown and what was available, with a directness and character he wants to preserve.
Those beginnings remained with him after he immigrated to the United States. Today, he lives about thirty minutes north of New York City. At 73, he is a first-time author looking back across the distance between an Italian childhood and an American life, bringing the two together in a memoir with recipes.
The questions that became a book.
The idea was personal before it was a publishing project. His grandchildren wanted to know how he had grown up and what he had done. Their questions opened the door to a larger task: putting the memories into words, so the people who came after him could understand the world he came from.
He worked on the manuscript over years, returning to it as time allowed. Eventually, having the time to give the story his attention made it possible to bring the book toward publication. Writing became a way to share his experience with his family, and to introduce other readers to a region of Italy they might not know.
The recipes belong to the story.
Food was always part of the telling. The family recipes are authentic to the way Domenico grew up, rather than Americanized versions of Italian dishes. They reflect what his family grew and cooked, and the connection between a meal and the life around it.
Originally gathered at the end of the manuscript, the recipes were moved into the ten chapters during developmental editing. That change gives them their proper place: alongside the memories, woven through the account of growing up and eventually coming to America.
A welcome to the reader.
Domenico hopes readers will find both a real life and a sense of place in these pages. He is interested in the human detail of remembering: how a family lived, how a childhood felt, and how the food of home can remain meaningful long after a move across an ocean.
His debut is an invitation to spend time with that story, and perhaps to think about the stories in one’s own family that deserve to be told. Library author-launch events around the holidays are being considered as part of sharing the book. Dates and locations will be announced when confirmed.
Thank you for making room for my story.
— Domenico