Pietro di Donato (1911–1992)

This book takes place in the 1920s. Although it is written as a fictional story, it is based on events that happened to the author as a boy. The main character is a 12 year old boy whose father dies in a horrific building collapse and is entombed in concrete on Good Friday. The father has a brother, Luigi, who promises to help the family, but he goes to work and is injured to the point that he can no longer work. The 12 year old boy, Paul, has to go to work as a bricklayer to support his mother and his siblings. He has to leave school and work construction - not the life he had envisioned. Because Paul is so young, he gets paid very little as a bricklayer. He soon overworks himself trying to make enough money, and has to leave a job.



Soon he finds a better paying brick-layer job and then later beings working on skyscrapers. He talks about working above "the toy world below". A close friend of his, and mentor falls to his death while working at one of the job sites and Paul decides at this point he no longer believes in God. With the death of his father and then of a close friend, he finds no reason for faith. His mother is upset with his decision, and Paul tries to make it up to her.



This book is labeled a classic, and I tried to like it. I liked the idea of it, and a lot of the story. I had a hard time with the writing. I keep coming back to these books - written in the late 1800s and early 1900s and think I can make it work, but I can't. I struggled with this one, even though it wasn't even 250 pages.



My grandparents were Italian immigrants. They came here and worked in the mines and in the mills of Pennsylvania. There lives were hard, so it did ring true to me how hard immigrants who come to America have it. Some make it - like my grandparents - and some don't. All work was dangerous, low pay, and unforgiving. So I was drawn to this story because of my own background. However - that darn writing style.



Anyway - if you aren't a big baby like I am, and enjoy the writing style of the early 20th century - don't pass up this book.… (more)

The book is well-written and engaging. It is not a dull tome about Mother Cabrini. The book details the saint’s fortitude and belief in her mission. At a young age, she fell in love with Christ and longed to be a missionary sister. However, due to her ill health, she was not accepted into any religious communities.

Eventually, after toiling in an orphanage, she was allowed to set up her own community, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. She had always longed to go to China as a missionary, but Pope Leo XIII sent her to America. She worked with indefatigable zeal to set up orphanages, schools, and hospitals in New York, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, and in South America as well.

She and her Daughers went down into the mines in Colorado to bring hope to the immigrants who had not seen the inside of a church since they left Italy. They nursed people through outbreaks of yellow fever and smallpox. They begged for money to set up more hospitals, schools, and orphanages.

In her sixty-seven years, Mother Cabrini accomplished more than many successful business men.

Whether you are a Catholic or not, I highly recommend this biography of a truly remarkable woman who did all she could with love to guide her.… (more)

“Christ in Concrete” is a remarkable little find. Written nearly eighty years ago, but with nary an out-of-date-reference or any contrivance or corniness, it reads with dynamism and literate flight that would not seem out of place in the present day. All rings with authenticity of direct cultural and lifeblood experience. The story is of socio-economic, class and cultural struggle. It doesn’t take much to guess that this account originates from Donato’s own experiences as worker and family member. The brutality of labour struggle though America’s depression years is portrayed, I believe, without an iota of propagandistic or didactic posturing. I get the definite sense the descriptions are based on actual events as experienced, if not close accounts. And terrible and relentless are the conditions the people must endure indeed! At the outset of the novel the father of a large family and many of his co-workers are buried in the rubble of a sub-standard structure. The well-being of a score of children is immediately threatened as there is no social safety net. All the social institutions, government, business and religion come under fire, but refuse responsibility. Injury and loss continue throughout the book, but it is not merely a rote list of misfortunes.

This novel is actually very and proudly lyrical throughout. There is joy and pride in the face of irreparable tragedy. The wellspring of this is the working-class Italian cultural origins of the author and his family. The minutiae of passion both amongst the men, women and children is as detailed as the descriptions of the technique of the artisanry. I liked and identified with it on so many levels. I even find that that the writing has interesting characteristics, almost avant-garde. Description seems to float upon the page demanding that the reader fill in detail from their imagination with a humanistic commonality (where otherwise, because of cultural distinctiveness, the brain would pause to conjecture). It causes a disjunction where one is reading what must be foreign colloquialism with familiarity. The flow changes abruptly sometimes to poetic and sensory technique, but there is no dawdling in the narrative. Nothing is included that isn’t essential.

The inevitable comparisons would be to socially-conscious writers of the time, such as Lillian Hellman or John Steinbeck, but there is little bending, posturing or allegorical ornamentation to make a point. Donato does not have to reach very far to draw on his inspirational resources and though there is emotional passion it is never affected. Intensely passionate, scathing, yet loving. I wonder how Donato managed to find the time to pull this off. Being a manual labourer for years myself I know how much extreme labour taxes one’s ability to do much else in one’s life. Truly the work of a literary genius, pretty much unheralded anymore. I want to find out more about this guy, but I’ve the feeling that this would be his masterpiece. If it isn’t the only one, even if it is, this guy, in my opinion, is one of the greatest novelists unjustly forgotten.… (more)

Shortly after his beloved father's death, by crucifixion on his bricklaying job, twelve year old Paul takes on his father's responsibilities. 'Christ in Concrete' is a book about pre-Great Depression Italian immigrant life; it's also a coming of age story that parallels the author's life.

Geremio, the father, shared with his co-workers his dream that his son would continue his education. On the death of his father, Paul begged to be taught bricklaying. His father's coworkers took him into their group. Paul moved from Job, with spasms of back pain from a man's day of work, to Tenement, where family, love and community awaited.

Written in somewhat broken English, I found the writing poetic with a strong, vibrant, pulsating rhythm of the life described. The personified Job and Tenement took on lives of their own, appearing as individual characters in this story of robust, labor intensive, caring lives.

Originally written in 1938 as a short story, Pietro di Donato has painted an awesome picture of people who rise every day to meet the challenges of life and death.

sh 3/3/2009… (more)