Out of Arcadia: The American Odyssey of Angelo Vlahos by  Nicholas Kokonis

Out of Arcadia is a sequel to award-winning Arcadia, My Arcadia. Kokonis’s debut novel was read worldwide and hailed by the critics as a “classic piece of work.” With his father invalid after falling off the family donkey and his mother so afflicted by arthritis that that she can hardly sell her flower and vegetable seeds in order to feed the family, Angelo Vlahos leaves his tiny village in rock-strewn Arcadia and arrives in Chicago on a forged bank certificate of deposit. With all his possessions in a bundle, thirty dollars in his pocket, and a registration at a phony technical institute in Chicago, he forges with hope toward his two goals: to get a college education while working to support his family back home and to reunite with the love of his childhood, Antigone. But unforeseen obstacles throw him painfully off course and into a harrowing quandary. Faced with deportation and a crisis of the spirit, Angelo prays for his destitute family and hopes for a miracle.

Paperback, 448 pages.