The Ornament Book — Dennis Kelly

“My childhood was another life. In America it will disappear. It will be back in Astento when people remember me. Laughing, running, playing tricks with my friends. They will have my childhood. It will not come with me.”In the 1920s, a teen-age girl, Francesca, leaves her valley in the Italian Alps with her widowed family for the promise of America. In New York the family find work, integrate into the community and adapt to the uncertainties of city life. She finds her skill in drawing and takes to new adventures.But to Francesca these realities are strange dreams. The pictures she makes are somewhere else �" she doesn't live in them. She hopes she will find her feelings waiting for her �" somewhere ahead in her new life. But memories take her back to her valley, keeping a home that she knows has gone.This is the story of an immigrant girl �" forgotten in the place she left, invisible in the place she comes to. Today will find tomorrow, but tomorrow will be somewhere else. So it is her feelings she must find. It is a place we all must leave. It is a journey we all must take.