Tommi Avicolli Mecca's stubborn old roots is a remarkable first novel. In covering the hundred-year history of one family from southern Italy to South Philadelphia, he's managed to create a sweeping epic by focusing on intimate relationships. He has a knack for creating a sense of time, place and character with just a few scrupulously researched details and a few short, well-crafted sentences. The roots he explores are strong, old and complex. Intergenerational personalities clash and yet are poignantly bound together; change is always tempered with a respect for tradition and the past always shapes the present. Importantly, the characters are drawn with compassion and affection, with sympathy for their flaws and admiration for their strengths, but without sentimentality. As an historian who is also a descendant of immigrants, I was thoroughly swept up in Avicolli Mecca's loving exploration of place and family and memory. You will be, too. - Bob Skiba, Historian, Author and Curator of Philadelphia's John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives