The Jodice Story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798337501963)

In 1903, a young man named Gennaro Iodice left his home and family in Naples, Italy, and arrived at Ellis Island with $7 in his pocket. His wife, Olimpia, followed a year later, and together they went on to have 14 children and helped establish the Jodice family in America.

The story of the Jodices is very much a part of the larger American immigrant story. Like others who came before them, they left Italy and The Netherlands, Germany and Poland, and came - as Iodices, Walkenhauses, Dembecks, Thrans and Mahnkens - to start a new life in a new world. Some prospered, some didn't. Some found what they were looking for, some failed. But all were united in their pursuit of the American Dream.

While we can't know all the individual reasons they had for leaving the known for the unknown, we do know that they shared the journey with millions of others like them, looking for a new home where they could escape war, poverty, and injustice to build a better life for themselves and their families.

The story of the Jodices is, in microcosm, the American immigrant story. It was and remains a journey of hope, as old as human history. One day another generation will look back on us with the same measure of interest and curiosity that we now look back on those who came before us. This book, then, is in many ways a love story to the generations that preceded us and the ones to come.