There was never any doubt that Linda Romanowski of Ardmore, Pa., would write a heritage memoir. The only mystery was the exact form it would take. That changed a few years ago when Romanowski was a graduate student at Rosemont College in Byrn Mawr, Pa., where she was pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. Her class had just watched “The Godfather” for critiquing purposes.

“That’s when it hit me; I scrutinized everything I had written to date and framed my writing in a series of vignettes,” she said. “I needed to organize the stories in a manner that was unforced, chronological, historical, and familial.”