Back in the early 1990s, I had a brief correspondence with journalist and author Gay Talese. I’d been reading his memoir, Unto the Sons, a 635-page tome described as “an Italian Roots” by Washington Post Book World. In our exchange of letters — actual pen and paper — Talese and I lamented the dearth of books about the Italian-American experience (despite the Polish surname, I’m three-quarters Italian).

At the time, we could come up with only three such books: Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, a novel that has not aged well; Mario Puzo’s Fortunate Pilgrim; and Talese’s memoir. (For some reason neither of us acknowledged The Godfather, the novel that lofted Puzo into the literary stratosphere.)