The Fortunate Pilgrim

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE GODFATHER – “A classic… The novel is lifted into literature by its highly charged language, its penetrating insights, and its mixture of tenderness and rage.” – New York Times Book ReviewDescribed by the author as his “best and most literary book.” Puzo’s classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants … York City immigrants living in Hell’s Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.

The book’s hero, Lucia Santa, is an incredibly captivating character and based on Puzo’s very own mother – he describes, “her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself, qualities not valued in women at the time.”

The Fortunate Pilgrim is a 1965 novel by American author Mario Puzo.^[1]

• Mario Puzo considered the novel his finest, most poetic, and literary work.^{[citation needed]} In one of his last interviews he stated that he was saddened by the fact that The Godfather, a fiction he never liked,^{[citation needed]} outshone the novel based on his mother’s honest immigrant struggle for respectability in America and her courage and filial love.
• Puzo said that the book’s hero, Lucia Santa, is based on his own mother: “Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth, in my own mind I heard the voice of my mother. I heard her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself. … The Don’s courage and loyalty came from her; his humanity came from her… and so, I know now, without Lucia Santa, I could not have written The Godfather.”
• Described by the author as his “best and most literary book.” Puzo’s classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell’s Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best.

The Fortunate Pilgrim, written by Mario Puzo, takes us to a world that has disappeared. It is the world of Italian migrants in the bowels of early 20th century New York. Mario Puzo is much better known as the author of the Godfather. Yet, in an interview, he said:

Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth, in my own mind I heard the voice of my mother. I heard her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself. … The Don’s courage and loyalty came from her; his humanity came from her… and so, I know now, without Lucia Santa, I could not have written The Godfather.

If you would like to meet this remarkable woman, you will need to read the Fortunate Pilgrim, for there she appears as the semi-biographical character Lucia Santa. Puzo describes the Fortunate Pilgrim as his greatest work and it is a pleasure to read, although very few know about the book. Unlike his later works which were written, as he says, to make a living, Puzo wrote the Fortunate Pilgrim as a work of art. It is, in part, the story of his own childhood and is a careful portrait of the immigrant life he experienced.

The Fortunate Pilgrim does not allow us to look away from the bitter but rich lives of Lucia Santa’s desperately poor family. Through their own eyes, we see the lived meaning of the world in which they find themselves. Puzo places us as silent observers at their kitchen table and we rejoice at their triumphs and mourn their defeats.