This year, the “Discovering La Famiglia” column hopes to help La Gazzetta Italiana readers find answers to their Italian genealogy questions. This month’s story is about Nora who contacted me after she received the results of her Ancestry DNA test. Nora was surprised to learn that she was about 25 percent Italian and she wanted to confirm the finding.

Nora did not know much about her family tree as her parents split up when she was a young girl and she lost her mother (who was not Italian) a few years later. Raised by an aunt and uncle, family history never came up in conversation. Nora found herself immersed in Italian American culture when she married her husband who was of Italian descent and she learned to be a wonderful cook of Italian American cuisine from her mother-in-law. She never realized that perhaps she had Italian roots too!