As the new century began in 2000, I received a flyer from an antiquarian bookseller announcing new “old” books he had acquired and was putting up for sale. I spotted a book listed therein with the name of an Italian author, Joseph Rocchietti, and noted the Americanization of his first name. The novel was published in Virginia in 1835, which I also found intriguing. After all, it was commonly held that the first Italian American novel, Luigi Donato Ventura's Peppino, was published 50 years after this one. I thought it was well worth looking into Rocchietti's work. So for a couple of hundred dollars, I received Lorenzo and Oonalaska—again quite a combination of names.
And so began the interest in Joseph Rocchietti, who emigrated to the United States in 1830, and in his novel. After I published several articles about the man and his many writings, first in...
