Not the typical nostalgic cliched narratives, but unique unconventional perspectives on immigration to the United States in the twentieth century.
Just another hot night in Los Angeles. Another strip club. The stage is lit. A dancer emerges from the swirling smoke. Their eyes lock in a hypnotic embrace and Salvino Quipal’s life begins to unravel. A safe, comfortable life spent caring for his mother and dedicated to climbing the ladder of success at work suddenly fills with danger. His pursuit of the dancer stirs to life a painful memory and he is plunged into a surreal world of violent bikers, gypsies, racist motel clerks, secluded beaches, elegant B & B’s and one peculiar, vagrant toucan.
Tiller of the Earth is the story of an ordinary man with a single prayer: America! Luciano Martello lives with his wife and son in an impoverished village located in the ancient, harsh, beautiful mountains of Calabria. The only way to escape the cycle of poverty and provide a life of plenitude for his family is to emigrate to America. But many obstacles block his path: WW2, a POW camp in North Africa, a perilous love affair, a reluctant wife.
In Way to Be, Luciano Martello and his wife, Rose, and his son, Joe, begin their lives in the America of the 1950’s, bewildered by an era defined by consumerism and conformity, baseball and TV westerns, Elvis and rock and roll, the civil rights movement, and the emergence of the Beat Generation. Luciano settles in a small, economically declining town in rust belt New York at the age of forty-five with no job skills, a forty-seven-year-old wife, and an eight-year-old son. Upon arrival misfortune strikes, and Luciano’s family is torn apart. Unless Luciano can mend the growing rifts between them, he could lose everything, including his family.
In Tapestry Joe Martello’s baseball teammate, Eddie Beltran, plays a game of dice with a violent drug dealer on the docks of L.A. harbor and loses the cherished heirloom Joe inherited from his mother. While Eddie gambles, Joe is fixated on Catalina, the drug dealer’s beautiful young wife who wears death’s head earrings and has odd markings on her neck. Despite Eddie’s warnings, Joe resolves to recover his mother’s bequest. But is he motivated by revenge or by his attraction to the mysterious and dangerous Catalina?.
A father and son return to Italy, the country of their births, to reacquaint themselves with the family they have not seen in thirty years. Though Nick has had a difficult relationship with his father and has no interest in visiting their birthplace in the Calabria region of southern Italy, he considers his father’s invitation an opportunity to see the famous tourist sites of Italy free of cost. But unknown to Nick, his father has a different agenda. His father is on a mission. He has returned seeking redemption. The girl he fell in love with when he was a young man is still alive. He wants to meet her and ask that she forgive him for his sinful actions. But his greatest struggle is to somehow find the courage to reveal to his son the secret he has kept hidden from Nick since his birth..
WRITING AS JAMES FAGAN
The Roaring Twenties in Chicago: prohibition, speakeasies, gangsters, flappers. Tony Bruno is forced to pay protection money to the mob to safeguard his photography studio. One night, he accidentally crosses two gangsters and is forced to flee to Wyoming, taking with him only his camera and his tripod. His wife, Mary, is suddenly in charge of the family. Or is she? Her son, Vito, who hates his father and always challenged his authority, convinces his younger brother to become a boxer to support his mother and his siblings. Meanwhile, Tony hides out in Wyoming, knowing the only way back to his family is to confront the gangsters before he runs out of time. Will he find the courage to act decisively? Or will the mob, the cowboys, the Great Depression, or Esmeralda, the snake charmer, keep Tony exiled in Wyoming forever?