Misguided Loyalty

A Wife’s Search for Truth in the Silence

When I fell in love with Gar, a blue-eyed collegiate swimmer, I opened my heart to his lively Sicilian family. Loud, bold, larger than life, they were everything my family was not. I could hardly wait to join them. Little did I know an all-out conspiracy would threaten to destroy our happily ever after.

MISGUIDED LOYALTY explores what happens in a family when withholding the truth hurts the person it intended to protect. This coming-of-age memoir examines the generational wounds of adoption, the search for personal identity, the uncovering of a hidden family history, a daughter’s profound grief. And an outsider’s take on the sometimes-comical quirks of Italian American culture: basement holidays, the sign of the horns, flocked wallpaper, three-day funerals, one-cheek kisses, slot machines, and food as a religion in this man-on-top, woman-in-the-kitchen family with too many Franks and Helens.