Lives of the Saints (1990) by Nino Ricci is the first in a trilogy of novels about an Italian immigrant to Canada, Vittorio Innocente, and his family. The author, Nino Ricci, is the son of Italian immigrants who grew up in Leamington, Ontario, home to a large community of Italian immigrants. The novel is a coming-of-age story told in first-person narration that details Vittorio’s life growing up in an impoverished small town in Italy, and then facing the death of his mother while en route to Canada. Lives of the Saints won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and was made into a 2004 television miniseries starring Sophia Loren.

This study guide uses the 2004 Cormorant Books paperback edition of Lives of the Saints.

Content Warning: The source text contains descriptions of domestic violence, bullying, and death.

Plot Summary

Lives of the Saints begins when Vittorio Innocente is six years old. He lives with his grandfather and mother in the fictional small town of Valle del Sole in the mountains of Southern Italy. His father is overseas in America. One July day in 1960, Vittorio is home alone when he hears a shout from the stable. He rushes over to see a man run out of the stable. He goes in to find that his mother has been bitten by a snake and is bleeding. She tells Vittorio not to tell anyone about the man he saw.

Vittorio’s mother, Cristina, is rushed to the hospital for treatment. When she returns home, Vittorio is told he can no longer sleep in the same bed as her and is given his own bedroom. That fall, Vittorio returns to school, but his best and only friend, Fabrizio, does not. Fabrizio has been pulled out of school to do farm work. The other boys in school begin to tease Vittorio, saying that his mother has been marked by the evil eye as a result of her snake bite.

When Vittorio gets in a fight with one of the boys at school over one such comment, his mother, Cristina, beats the boy’s mother. She warns the villagers about teasing her boy. His schoolteacher, knowing the difficult situation Vittorio is in, takes a greater interest in him and keeps him after school to read him Lives of the Saints. The other villagers avoid Cristina more than ever because they think the evil eye is on her.

On Vittorio’s seventh birthday, he goes into the market town of Rocca Secca with his mother. He is given a lucky lira by Cristina’s friend Luciano. One day, Vittorio goes into the stable to find his mother vomiting. By Christmas of that year, it has become clear that Cristina is pregnant by the man in the stable. His grandfather resigns from his position as mayor out of shame. Unashamed herself, Cristina goes to Christmas mass heavily pregnant. That night, Cristina and her father fight because she is not going to rejoin her husband in America and, in his anger, her father knocks over a desk, breaking his leg and hip.

In February, Cristina receives a letter from an unknown sender. She goes away to Rome for a few days. When she returns, she announces that she and Vittorio will be leaving for Halifax in a few weeks. Vittorio’s friends and family give him various good luck tokens before he leaves: Fabrizio gives him a jackknife, his schoolteacher gives him her edition of Lives of the Saints, and his grandfather gives him his military medals. Upon their departure, Cristina calls the townspeople fools for their superstitious beliefs.

Once on the boat, Cristina is given a second-class cabin because she is so heavily pregnant. She begins to spend time with a third mate and enjoys her freedom. She is invited to dinner at the captain’s table. That night, a large storm springs up. In the middle of the storm, Cristina goes into labor in her cabin. Vittorio gets the doctor, is nearly swept overboard in the process, and helps as best he can. Cristina gives birth to a little girl. In the middle of the night, Vittorio feels something wet in their bed and realizes it is blood. His mother has died in the middle of the night.

Vittorio gets pneumonia and has a high fever for the rest of the voyage. He ends up in a hospital ward in Canada, where he hazily recognizes both the man who was in the stable and his father. Before he disembarked, Vittorio had gone onto the deck, wracked with fever, and his lucky lira fell onto the deck and dropped into the ocean.