Book excerpt: This memoir chronicles three southern European clans, their migration to the United States, and intertwining, as well as hard working, warm, loving, and close-knit personal values they bestowed on their kin. Their story flows across Europe and North America from the mid 19th to the late 20th centuries. Family bonds survived and strengthened despite parental and sibling deaths, boarding schools, upheavals in occupied Romania during WW I, personal tragedies, separations imposed by WW II and the Communist bloc, civil war, and financial struggles. The Theodosious present a microcosm of southern European immigration to the United States in the earliest 1900s. From seemingly endless lines of railroad track stretching out before repair gangs of excited young Greeks in their first jobs in America to opening of substantial business establishments, they were comforted in the knowledge their toils would someday benefit their progeny.