Love, Italy, and alternative-history fiction that travels down a what-if path to approach a truth: these have long been preoccupations of Christopher Castellani. His first three novels, the Maddalena trilogy (A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love), were published by Algonquin over a 10-year period beginning in 2003 and form a semi-autobiographical family memoir.

Castellani says the “alt” elements took root because he wanted to give his parents access to the people and things they’d felt the most regret about. For his mother, Castellani wrote in the boyfriend she always wished she’d had before marrying at 19 and immigrating to the United States from Italy; for his father, the restaurant his wife wouldn’t let him open.