IMAGINE THIS: In 1840, 37 immigrants came from Italy to the United States. In 1907 — the year in which novelist Vincent Panella’s latest work, Sicilian Dreams, is set, 285,731 did so — the greatest number in history. Such an explosion of dreamers was eager to reboot here in America, among them, Panella’s family.

Panella lives up on Augur Hole Road, just beyond the Marlboro border, in an 1840 home that she shares with his wife, photographer Susan Sichel. A vast sea of knowledge and experience lies between Panella’s studio on a dirt road in the country and the circumstances of Sicilian Dreams, published last fall.