The Road to San Donato

Fathers, Sons, and Cycling Across Italy

224 pages
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 978-1-68051-244-1
Published: Aug 30, 2019

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Description

The Road to San Donato is an adventurous travel memoir of an American father and son tracing their Italian heritage by bicycle. With only the bare essentials on their backs, author Robert Cocuzzo and his sixty-four-year-old father, Stephen, embark on a torturous 425-mile ride from Florence, Italy, to San Donato Val di Comino, an ancient village hidden in the Apennine mountains from which their family emigrated a hundred years earlier. After getting lost, beaten down, and very nearly stranded, when they finally reach the village the Cocuzzos discover so much more than their own family story.

For many Jews in the 1940s, the road to San Donato was one of exile; during World War II, dozens were interned in the village. When the Nazis came to ship them off to death camps, however, many of the villagers went to heroic lengths to save their lives. Walking and pedaling through this history, Robert Cocuzzo is determined to learn the role his family played at the time. The Road to San Donato is a story of fathers and sons, discovering lost "cousins," valorous history, and the challenge and exhilaration of traveling by bicycle.

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Details

224 pages
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 978-1-68051-244-1
Published: Aug 30, 2019

Reviews

An adventurous and deftly written and inherently fascinating kind of travel memoir as an American father and son painstakingly traced their Italian heritage and family history by bicycle.
— Midwest Book Review
This adventure memoir tells the story of a 425-mile cycling adventure the author and his 64-year-old father embarked on through Italy in search of their family’s history.
— Bicycling Recommended Gift
The Road to San Donato: Fathers, Sons, and Cycling Across Italy...uses cycling to rediscover family roots.
— Noah Robertson, The Christian Science Monitor
The book, lovingly told and tightly paced, charts [the author and his father’s] journey, the mishaps, strains, triumphs, giving sense of a place, a history, a series of fathers, and the spinning wheel of time that binds them together.
— Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe
A delightful Italian travel adventure, sure to appeal to cyclists—and an ideal choice for father-son book clubs.
— Brenda Barrera, Booklist
The Road to San Donato: Fathers, Sons, and Cycling Across Italy recalls their [Cocuzzo and his father's] 425-mile ride from Florence, which carries them up thousands of vertical feet and elevates not only their bond with each other, but also with their family's history in the ancient town.
— Virtuoso Traveler
This is a wonderful book, and an inspiration - I'd love to take a bike trip like this in time and space with my children.
— Paul Theroux, Best selling novelist and travel writer
A powerful meditation on the complexities of war, refugee and immigrant experiences, and the meaning of personal sacrifice…. The Road to San Donato is a moving multigenerational American immigrant story about returning home in search of history and making peace with the past to forge a new future.
— Wendy Hinman, Foreword Reviews
A compelling ride-along adventure to the heart of home, family, and fatherhood.
— Charles Graeber, New York Times bestselling author of The Breakthrough
Robert Cocuzzo’s The Road To San Donato is an absolute delight. Poignant, uplifting, powerful—a father and son journey that’s part adventure, part soulful family memoir. Had me reading late into the night, not wanting it to end. Beautifully written from the first page.
— Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of Bitcoin Billionaires