Earlier this year, I was fortunate to receive a dust-jacket blurb from one of America’s great writers of nonfiction, Gay Talese. It was a very generous gesture. Turns out, as this story indicates, the generosity of Talese and his book editor wife, Nan, is legendary this time of year in New York City.

Talese’s classic work Unto the Sons remains the quintessential immigration story. He, too, traces his Italian roots to Calabria, and his father, like my grandfather, settled in Cape May County, New Jersey, and started a business that flourished. For Talese’s father, it was a men’s and women’s clothing store in Ocean City. My aunts and uncles were frequent customers.

Debbie Barsotti, a talented reporter for the Catholic Star Herald (Camden, NJ diocese), writes about “My Cousin the Saint” in this week’s issue of the paper. An excerpt:

“In Catanoso’s book, the stories of both his grandfather and the sainted cousin come alive. There is historical perspective about life on both continents. ‘In order for me to write about them,’ Catanoso said, ‘I knew I needed to provide enough history to bring them life in the context of their time. Otherwise you couldn’t appreciate the courage of both of them.’ “

The whole story is here.