When We Were Strangers: A Powerful Literary Coming-of-Age Novel – An Italian Immigrant's Journey Through 19th Century America

“The people as real as your own family, and the tale realistic enough to be any American’s.”
—Nancy E. Turner, author of These is My Words

 

A moving, powerful, and evocative debut novel, When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt heralds the arrival of superb new voice in American fiction. A tale rich in color, character, and vivid historical detail, it chronicles the tumultuous life journey of a young immigrant seamstress, as she travels from her isolated Italian mountain village through the dark  corners of late nineteenth century America. A historical novel that readers of Geraldine Brooks, Nancy Turner, Frances de Pontes Peebles, and Debra Dean will most certainly cherish, When We Were Strangers will live in the mind and the heart long after its last page is turned.