Ryan Byrnes launches “My Dear Antonio: A Love Story”
Join us for a reading and reception to celebrate the publication of My Dear Antonio: A Love Story, a book about when home is a person, not a place
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.
Books will be available for purchase at the event, and Ryan will be on hand to sign them.
About the book
New York City 1912. After surviving a near-fatal asthma attack, Italian immigrant 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 immigrants to return to the Old World.
Sicily 1912. Antonio Orlando dreams of working in his father’s barbershop, but mafia shootings force him to escape to Tunisia and live with his uncle. His only hope—the dream of one day returning to Sicily and rebuilding his father’s barber shop. Through his friendship with Anna, he starts to reconsider where his future truly lies. Is home a place or a person?
“This fictional imagining of a documented family history is pure literary alchemy. Ryan Barnes personalizes the desperate poverty that drove his grandparents to emigrate to America along with so many others, as well as the omnipresent menaces of disease, financial collapse, and political corruption woven into the fabric of early 20th-century life. Impeccably researched as well as heartfelt and captivating, this is a must-read for fans of historical fiction and true-life love stories alike.” —Erica Obey, author of The Brooklyn North Murders
About the author
Ryan Byrnes is the great-grandson of Italian immigrants Anna DiNicola and Antonio Orlando. His previous novel Royal Beauty Bright won a gold medal in the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and his fiction has been published in Italian America, December, Pembroke, Sixfold, and more. He is a book editor at Springer Nature in New York City.
Time: 6:30-8:00 pm EST
Free!
