Left Bank Books invites the public to a free talk and book signing by writer and university professor Anna Monardo on Tuesday, July 9, at 6:30 pm. Her recently released memoir, After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage, tells the story of two marriages undone by a dowry and the fallout from that rift on three generations of a Southern Italian family.

In After Italy, Monardo charts her grandfathers’ immigration to Pittsburgh, her father’s wartime as a medical student in Naples, the family’s marriages—including her own—that were tainted by an Old World curse, and an unlikely path to international adoption. She writes: “To tell my family’s story, I could dig in anywhere—1915, 1950, 2024. I could begin in Italy, Pittsburgh, New York, or Nebraska. Begin with my parents, my grandparents, or me, and from every point of entry, our story is the same: three generations unhappy in love.”