Teresa und Lucia leben als Bedienstete in der Villa von Graf Montforte und seiner Frau Elisabetta in Neapel. Lucia ist das Kind einer Vergewaltigung, die Teresa bei einem Maskenball erdulden musste. Teresa ist temperamentvoll und launenhaft. Statt wie aufgetragen einzukaufen, will Teresa den Meister Toscanini von ihrer Stimme überzeugen, doch der verhöhnt sie und macht sie zum Gespött der Menschen. Die Gräfin behandelt Lucia freundlich und bringt ihr sogar Schreiben und Lesen bei. Als Lucia von einem Spaziergang mit der Gräfin zurückkommt und sieht, wie ihre Mutter vom Grafen und seinem Leibarzt gefoltert wird, um ihr den Irrsinn auszutreiben, will sie dazwischen gehen und gerät auch in Gefahr. Teresa schlägt den Grafen nieder. Sie müssen fliehen. Dank der Hilfe des Butlers Paolo und der finanziellen Unterstützung der Gräfin, können sie mit einem Schiff nach Amerika reisen.
Aber auch in Amerika ist nicht alles Gold was glänzt. Obwohl Teresa Arbeit findet, wird sie immer unsteter. Doch dann kommt sie bei einem Varieté unter und es scheint sich zum Guten zu wenden. Lucia besucht die Schule und will als erstes italienisches Mädchen die High-School beenden. Doch die Vergangenheit verfolgt Teresa und Lucias Wünsche scheinen Träume zu bleiben.
Wir erfahren diese Geschichte aus der Sicht von Lucia. Lucia kämpft für ihre Träume, doch das Schicksal wirft ihr immer wieder Knüppel zwischen die Beine. Sie rackert sich ab und kümmert sich um ihre Mutter und auch um anderen Menschen. Sie sieht die Ungerechtigkeit in den Betrieben, sieht dass sie Frauen ihr Material selbst kaufen oder leasen müssen und dennoch ständig betraft werden aus nichtigen Gründen, so dass am Ende kaum genug zum Leben bleibt. So bleibt es nicht aus, dass sie sich sehr in der Gewerkschaftsarbeit engagiert. Trotz ihres selbstlosen Wirkens bleibt sie für mich ein wenig unnahbar. Auch das Verhältnis zwischen Teresa und Lucia ist distanziert, obwohl sie füreinander da sind.
Teresas Verhalten, schon in Italien extrem, wird in Amerika ständig unverständlicher, doch als ich am Ende ihre ganze Geschichte erfahren habe, tat sie mir leid.
Neben den beiden gab es noch eine ganze Reihe anderer Personen, die alle sehr vielschichtig und authentisch dargestellt wurden.
Es leben damals in Cleveland Einwanderer aus vielen Ländern. Sie bleiben weitestgehend unter sich mit ihren eigenen Regeln und Gebräuchen. Die Fabrikbesitzer versuchen die einzelnen Gruppen gegeneinander auszuspielen. Trotzdem kommt es zu Streiks und die Menschen halten größte Not aus, um ihre Bedingungen zu verbessern. Dennoch versuchen die Firmenchefs, die Streiks zu beenden. Dabei ist ihnen jedes Mittel recht.
Der Roman hat mir gut gefallen und es ist sehr interessant, mehr über die Arbeitsverhältnisse in Amerika aus der Sicht von Frauen zu erfahren. Doch obwohl die Geschichte voller Emotionen ist, ist sie recht nüchtern erzählt, so dass ich nicht so richtig gepackt wurde. ( )

What I liked: the description of the female immigrant work experience in Cleveland and the description of Lucia's mother's mental illness. What I didn't like: the book seemed flat as in da- da-da - da - da. There were no exciting sections. Ball too matter if fact when the truth was not humdrum at all. The characters had depth and were true to form. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, but then I have a soft spot for stories about Italian immigrant women and this one takes place in Cleveland OH so it felt even more familiar. I was not familiar with the Cleveland Garment Workers' Strike of 1911 but the fact that my grandmother worked in a garment factory in Lorain, OH brought the story home to me. ( )

This book starts in the early 1900s in Italy. The main characters, Teresa and her daughter, Lucia are servants there in a villa. They escape Italy to go to Cleveland, Ohio. Here they start a new life and Teresa becomes the Naples Nightingale a singing sensation of vaudeville. Life in Ohio brings many new trials and tribulations for this mother and daughter. Lucia must grow up quickly and learn how to support herself and later also her mother. With no other family in the country she learns to forge friendships with people that she can rely on for support.

I liked Lucia as a character, she is a very strong and determined woman. The book shows the obstacles she must overcome as an immigrant. Lucia also shows us how the young immigrants were often exploited and worked under horrible conditions. She becomes an activist for change in the labor force. Lucia's mother suffers from mental illness and we are shown how Lucia is forced to deal with this problem. We are shown the inhumane and bizarre treatments used for mental illness during this time period.

I really enjoyed this book! I read this one in 3 days. I felt that it had a good plot and was well written. I live in Akron, Ohio which is not far from Cleveland, so the area it was set in is familiar to me. I found the book to be engaging. It just sort of unfolded. I especially liked the ending. It ties the book together really well with the beginning. There is also a romance woven into the book. I think this is a good look at what shaped the founders of our country. I give this book a 4.5 out of 5. ( )

Do you know when your family came to this country? What did they do when they got here? How did their life lead to yours? I don't know this sort of information about most of my family although I have relatives with interests in genealogy so they may have a lot more knowledge about my family's past than I do. In the few cases I do know about, my ancestors, like so many other people from their home countries came over here in search of a better life. What their lives looked like once they arrived and whether their dreams were fulfilled, I may never know. In Pamela Schoenewaldt's new novel Swimming in the Moon, she follows one family, a mother and daughter from Naples, as they persevere and build a new life in America.

Lucia and her young mother Teresa are house servants in Italy. They are generally protected from the cruelties of the count by the countess who often asks Teresa, who possesses an angelic voice, to sing to her to alleviate her headaches. But Teresa has mood swings and suffers fits of rage and when the vicious count allows his physician to torture her in the name of treatment, Lucia is also seized for treatment. But Teresa defends her daughter, attacking the count and the two of them must flee the villa. With the help of the majordomo, Paolo, and money from Contessa Elisabetta, they escape to America, ready to forge a new life in their new country.

Once settled in Cleveland in a boarding house run by Paolo's cousin, Lucia has the opportunity to go to school, learn English, and work towards a high school diploma while Teresa works as a chocolate dipper and then finds her way into vaudeville singing as the Naples Nightingale. And for a while they seem to be adjusting and even coming closer to fulfilling some of their dreams. But an immigrant's life is not easy and they face injustice and hardship even as they persevere. Lucia finds dear friends who support her in her American life but Teresa slips and her mental instability grows until finally, Lucia, who only enjoyed a short and dreamlike time at Hiram College, is called back to Cleveland to care for the mother who has had a complete breakdown and can no longer be left unsupervised.

Although Lucia's education has made it possible for her to avoid factory work herself, she is still a young woman of the immigrant community and she sees the hardship and injustice that so many others have to endure in local factories and workshops: low wages, grueling work hours and forced overtime, inappropriate advances by bosses, random fines and firings, and dangerous working conditions. And she sees the ways in which the workers are exploited because of their poverty and their inability to come together as one large group, which only results in their remaining downtrodden and abused. Unable to ignore the plight of her friends and neighbors, she becomes involved with the union and helps to organize a strike in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Her formal education may have come to an end with her mother's escalating mental illness but Lucia finds her passion in working with the union and organizing the strike.

Lucia is a smart, compassionate, and determined character. She endures everything that life throws at her, the horrors and the heartbreaks, and yet she never gives up, adjusting her dreams to reality, always moving forward no matter how painful. Schoenewaldt has done a marvelous job drawing the reality of life for immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century in an industrial city like Cleveland. Her portrayal of labor and unions and the driving forces for and against is well done. And in addition to the historical aspect of the novel, she has written a touching novel of mother daughter love and caring. Lucia's devotion and her big heart are in evidence in all of her relationships but never more so than when she cares lovingly for her diminished mother. Adding in the tragedy of mental illness and the barbaric treatment available for it at the time is perhaps one strand too many in this historical fiction but it does add one more trouble, and really the driving trouble, to Lucia's story so I'm not certain how it could have been left out. Over all this is a quick and fascinating look at a piece of our nation's history that should not yet have faded from our collective consciousness. ( )