A Bench on Which to Rest by Elena Mac-caferri is a simple tale, simply told. In a little more than 100 pages, Climene recounts her journey from her village in the hills of northern Italy to Montreal and back again. The language has a quiet dignity to it, which saves the book from becoming just another sentimental love story.

In the mid-1930s Climene leaves her beloved land for Canada to join her fiancé, Adelmo, who has told her “wonderful things, things I didn’t know a man could say to a woman.” But the path of true love does not run smoothly, and she is left to make her own way in a new country. This she does very well: by the end of the book she has reared two educated children, and acquired a farm on the banks of the St. Lawrence as well as a motel in a Montreal suburb. She also finds a husband who loves her, and to whom she is faithful, but with whom she never completely connects.

This is country seen before in Nino Ricci’s trilogy about Italian-Canadians and Susan Gabori’s In Search of Paradise: The Odyssey of an Italian Family. Those who love a love story shouldn’t let that familiarity bother them, however. Nor should those who want to learn about what life was like for immigrants to Canada in the middle of the 20th century. It is surprising, though, to see fascist sympathies portrayed as commonplace among Italians in Canada before the Second World War.

Maccaferri’s own life was remarkably similar to her heroine’s, and she was apparently writing from firsthand observations. She was born in Bologna in 1921 and died 66 years later in Montreal. The book was originally published in Italian in 1976, and that year it won a prize for Canadian-Italian literature. The excellent translation was done by Maccaferri’s granddaughter, Maria Colfer Phillips.