New Mexico author, Isabel Bearman Bucher, is a first generation Italian American. Her first book, Nonno's Monkey, An Italian American Memoir, has taken a lifetime to complete. Part I begins in 1800, and the French Revolution, with fictionalized stories of la Famiglia Giani, told to her by her Nonna, Angela Irene Giani DeBernardi, enriched by the author's research. Part II begins on a warm late July day in 1942, when Nonno's monkey arrives in the back of a '37 Packard, amidst a tight tangle of cigar smoking, -three-sheets-to-the-wind ubriaco- family men. Grandfather, Enrico Santo DeBernardi, won him at the Connecticut State Fair by singing -Ach Du Leiber Augustine, - a German song, no less. Since he had a terrible voice, the family women were sure, when the monkey began his exquisite mischief, that his previous owners would have PAID anybody to take him. America was at war. Walter Winchell was saying hello to Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea, who gathered nightly around their Philco radios. Milton Cross was announcing Saturday opera from the New York Met, which provided the stage for family crying game - IF it was Italian. For the next eight months, Chico ties all the family stories together with his monkey tale. In the company of a fatso Dachshund named Yaakie, an Irish Setter named Rusty, and a wicked black-as-night stray tom named Billy, the monkey conjures his dirty deeds with brilliant precision. The little scimmia whips town hysteria and family emotion to a fine froth. Then one day, after the forty-yard-dash to the henhouse for eggs, the last straw flutters down onto Nonna's egg-splattered glasses. Chico had made friends with her precious pullets, and with one hand under their -culos- he patiently waited for the eggs to drop. This day he fired them at the enemy like machine gun pellets. Fed up at last, Nonna musters the family women who all cast a paralyzing icy shroud over their fun-loving men. Tight lips, eye squints and hand motions give the ultimatum, -Ba-da-Boom! Basta! Enough! It's the monkey, or ...- From 1800 to 1914 Northern Italy, were Nonna, Angela Irene Giani DeBernardi draws a country from a crystal bowl, to the war years in their adopted country, Nonno's Monkey links seven generations of family history and story. Tradition, music, food, love and rolling humor, Nonno's Monkey is told from the eyes of a the child of immigrant Italian Americans, living in a traditional Yankee village. It's a chronicle of family roots. It remembers the old days and old ways of Old Country Americans. Photos go back to 1850's. Most of the abbreviated stories have appeared world-wide in the Chicken Soup for the Soul and Adams Cup of Comfort Series. It ends in 2003, when the author, raises a glass of deep red Cabernet to them all, understanding, at last, the immeasurable loss and richness of what they gave her. Order from: Available online at: oneitaliana.com. Purchases can be made through Amazon, Borders Books and Ingram Press.