Soundings Play Reading Series: Smoke Screen-- A Sicilian/American Opera by Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco

Having given up on his American dream 20 years earlier, Nino Di Martino, a Sicilian lemon grower, returns in 1993 to seek treatment for lung cancer and is housed once again by his sister, Sali, in northern New Jersey. As this intimate immigrant family drama unfolds, cross-cultural values clash and regrets and resentments surface among Nino, Sali, and Nino’s children, Gianni and Lia. Straddling two worlds as they try to fulfill their aspirations and obligations, and bound by their love for each other despite distance and differences, the family must come to terms with loss and longing, and the vital need to express what they most need to say while they still have the breath.