Alice Scardua Conte

The Chestnut Trees Alice Scardua Conte

Idyllic towns, beautiful seashores, and the lives of people living on them portrayed by the author and pictures to illustrate the story throughout the book. Based on a family of Italian immigrants that moved to Brazil four generations ago, I am third and narrate the facts including the history of the Italian immigration in Brazil and contributions it left to the economy and culture. With their delectable cuisine, entrepreneurial mindset and ambition, the Italians left their footprints in my country in the development of beautiful towns where they settled and transformed. With their arrival and incorporation of their agriculture techniques in the coffee plantations, coffee growing exceeded expectation and in consequence, the economy grew and the country developed with the money earned in the coffee business. My great-parents became successful coffee farmers and left their contributions as well. The family grew in numbers and their offspring's continued their legacy moving to big towns like my grandparents and had their own families and life moved on. The book moves from the Italians arriving in Brazil, building cities, forming families and how they grew and created their own legacies as well. My grandmother will take front stage, she was in fact my inspiration to write this story, her personality, commitment to her family, the parties and reunions at her house were all memorable to me combined with the charisma the sea brought to the town, Vitoria, capital of the state and an island-perhaps my paradise those days, a long time ago, time has elapsed, just memories................