In 1950s Chicago, a boy hides in his closet to escape a father’s habitual rage. There he conjures up another paternal figure in his artistic Italian grandfather, Canio Grieco. With his wondrous tricks and stories of “Italy,” his library and drawings, his baseball and opera, Canio becomes the model of creativity for the lonely, introverted grandson who learns to survive through ingenuity, imagination, and electricity. Canio’s Secret is a coming-of-age story about young Greg’s struggle to find solace in his mother’s Catholicism and break free of his father’s anger. Told through intimate portraits of parents and grandparents, nuns and janitors, friends and local characters, and their unsettling, often humorous, encounters, it is also the vibrant portrait of a multi-ethnic neighborhood soon to be scattered by white flight. As the older writer ponders his grandfather’s influence, the memoir becomes a meditation on Canio’s enigmatic advice, spoken in the summer of 1953: “Happiness is all that’s required.”
The Story Behind Canio’s Secret
Sidonie Smith (editor) and Greg Grieco have been together since the spring of 1973. Here’s what she has written about how this book came to be. “In 2002 Greg came close to finishing a memoir of his grandfather Canio Grieco. Then life intruded, as he began living with dementia, a deterioration that has unfolded across many years. In the last year, the dementing process gained on him, taking with it the stories he tells so powerfully in this memoir. So, clearly, the time had come for me to edit his book into final shape and publish his coming-of-age story about Canio and Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. The writing is all Greg’s. The organization into chapters and final editing are mine. I have done what I could to enable these stories to survive, taking Canio’s wise advice to find happiness where it comes. Preparing this book for Greg is the happiness that has been required of me now.”