Promises to Keep: The Untold Story of a Family Trapped in War-Torn Italy

Thomas F. Dwyer
iUniverse (2009)
ISBN 9780595529001
Reviewed by Beverly Pechin for Reader Views (11/09)

Rarely do you read a book with so much intrigue, spirit and insightfulness of a family history. The intimate family pictures, while not plentiful, was a huge factor in bringing the human aspect to this amazing story of an Italian family in war-torn times. 

To see the characters, their depth, their will to survive and their determination to “become someone” or “something” in this world was simply breathtaking. There aren’t words deep enough to describe the family portrayed in “Promises to Keep” and the character of the man himself whom the story follows, Domenico Forte.  To see what he gives up as a man, as a father and as a husband, all in order to give his family the best he can and better than he ever had, simply portrays this man that is, for lack of better words, “filled with pride and strength.”   

The storyline itself is one that is amazing, but add to that the depth of the main characters and you have simply one of the most amazing stories of family history ever written. It’s not a book about someone “famous” – it’s a book about someone “real.”  This could have been your own ancestors’ story, traveling to the great land of freedom known as America, trying to make for a better world for themselves and those they love. 

You will cry at the sorrow, you will laugh at the joy and you will most of all gain a new-found respect for those days gone by when being an immigrant was something that would later make your ancestors proud - knowing you were a man or woman of character and strength above and beyond what ANY of us today could imagine.

An amazing author with an amazing story to tell in “Promises to Keep”- Thomas F. Dwyer did it well!

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