My Dear Antonio

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My Dear Antonio is a novel inspired by the true love story of Byrnes' great-grandparents-children of the Sicilian diaspora separated from their families on the Mediterranean coast who loved, parted, and found each other again seven years and three continents later. In 1912, after barely medicating herself against a near-fatal asthma attack, Sicilian emigrant Anna DiNicola reluctantly leaves her family's Brooklyn tenement to seek a cure in the balmy climate of Tunisia. She is one of the few American immigrants to return to the Old World. In Tunisia, she detests how her asthma renders her dependent on her aunt, so she works for independence by learning to weave traditional wedding shawls for the Sephardic Jewish community. However, her apprenticeship comes with an expectation that she will marry her mentor's son while her heart lies with someone else. Antonio Orlando, a Sicilian native, dreams of working in his father's barber shop. However, mafia shootings force his father to close the shop and emigrate to America, abandoning Antonio in the Old World. To avoid slavery under the mafia, Antonio moves in with his uncle, a barber in Tunisia. Antonio swears he will one day return to Sicily and rebuild his family's barber shop, hoping it will inspire his father to return. He befriends Anna during her regular haircuts and begins to wonder if home is not a place but rather a person. When he accepts a betrothal to his cousin that would enable him to return to Sicily, Antonio must choose between his duty to family and his heart.