Synopsis of linked short stories
It was 1948 and Manuel Souza was 15 years old when he left his family and the comfort of his village on Pico Island in the Portuguese Azores. With barely an eighth-grade education, Manuel arrived in the U.S., scared and unable to speak English. And when he did say the few words he knew, it was with a stutter so bad he wasn't understood. He stumbled through the hollow, dreary halls of Ellis Island, where he stood in the lice and inspection lines, facing the scowls of arrogant immigration officers. It was there that one officer told him, "You'll never be rich, but your children someday might be."
With that hope, from Ellis Island to California, Manuel had a job waiting for him in the commercial tuna fishing industry (think Star-Kist canned tuna). But in those days there was an immigration quota on "Portagees," so, at the tender age of 15, his wealthy uncle (pioneer of the purse seine tuna fishing net) paid a woman in her sixties to "marry" Manuel Souza on paper so he could legally stay in the U.S.
Maria Elena lived in the small farming community of San Pablo in the San Francisco Bay area. She was a first-generation Portuguese American who didn't speak English when she went to kindergarten because her mother and grandparents didn't know English. She did well in school and dreamt of becoming a famous opera singer and moving to San Francisco, leaving the smell of linquica and cod behind forever.
But as life often does, Maria Elena's plans took a U-Turn. Instead of moving to San Francisco for her spot at The Music Conservatory, she met Manuel Souza, an uneducated tuna fisherman from Pico. They eloped and moved to San Diego, a city Maria Elena always said was a "sleepy, Navy town with absolutely no culture."
This union produced two children: Vic and Ellie. Born in the tumultuous sixties, Ellie soon loathed her stifling cultural family expectations and her Right-Wing Republican pill-addicted mother. She also was humiliated and emotionally abused by her alcoholic, distant father. The way she coped was by writing, including Ridercella - a feminist take on Cinderella much to the delight of her liberal elementary school teachers.
Manuel often deserted his wife and children, travelling around the world, taking mistresses from the Solomon Islands to Panama and everywhere in between. One mistress in particular was interesting to Ellie - the granddaughter of Haile Selassie, once emperor of Ethiopia who her father met on Saipan. Manuel's disappointment with the "American Dream" brought him to more High Balls than his liver could withstand; the mainstay of the fishing industry. His daughter Ellie's journey also included getting high and drunk and trying to find solace in bed with many emotionally distant men. Mary Elena's ending comes at 65 from too many pain killers and a broken heart.
A turning point in the stories comes when Ellie finds sobriety as Manuel drinks himself to death. And it is only when Ellie agrees to bring her father's body back to Samoa for burial - the place where he ended up living for 25 years with his new wife and children - that Ellie is able to bury her resentments, guilt and shame in its volcanic soil. She finally appreciates Manuel and Maria Elena's journeys -- as well as her own.
