Salvatore A Trancucci III’s Sonny and Teresa: A Love Story Across Generations begins in postwar Leavenworth, Kansas, where Sebastian “Sonny” Grasso has returned from Army service in Japan to play for the minor league Leavenworth Braves. Teresa is an Iowa-born student nurse at St. Mary’s when a baseball game introduces her to the Staten Island outfielder, beginning a courtship that soon reaches far beyond the ballpark. Sonny hopes baseball will open a future in the major leagues, but Teresa’s aunt Eulalia Anton, who helped raise her after her mother’s death, has already imagined Teresa’s life within the Irish Catholic world she knows. Sonny’s Italian heritage and baseball ambitions make the relationship a source of family conflict. As his season moves quickly, a summer meeting turns into a decision about marriage that could take Teresa from Kansas into Sonny’s life on Staten Island.
Salvatore A. Trancucci III’s Sonny and Teresa: A Love Story Across Generations is a wonderful historical romance based on real life, and I love how married life is the heart of the story. Trancucci does a beautiful job with period details, especially in the Grasso family market, where Christmas music shares the radio with sports updates as Sonny works the till. Sheffield Street is a character in its own right, from the children using a sewer cap as a home plate to Teresa calling them inside for dinner. Sonny and Teresa are wonderful together, and their chemistry is fantastic. After Sonny leads the College of Staten Island women’s softball team to a conference championship, Teresa reads his face over coffee and knows he plans to retire. Well written and full of archival visuals, readers interested in historical fiction about family life will adore this book.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers’ Favorite