View source for Alice & Luigi

{{Book
|title=Alice & Luigi
|author=Lay, Greame
|year=2006
|publisher=David Ling Publishing
|ISBN=1877378070
|language=English
|format=Paperback and Kindle
|topic=Novels about Italians in New Zealand, 
|period=1870s
|image=Book- Alice & Luigi.jpg
|link=https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Alice_Luigi.html?id=kdXmAAAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
}}

This is a novel by [https://www.read-nz.org/writer/lay-graeme/ Graeme Lay] and a tribute by the author to his pioneering great-grandparents, Alice and Luigi Berretti, with a vivid description of the life of immigrants in the 1870s and beyond. The novel record historical facts but it is fictional. A blurb of the books reads: The year is 1878. Luigi Galoni (the surname is also fictional), a young Italian fisherman, is forced to flee his home in Pesaro and sail to New Zealand. There he joins a friend, Leopoldo, in the Haast region, where together they try to break in their land. A death forces Luigi to move on, first to Westport, then the windswept coast of Wellington, where he joins an Italian fishing community. There he meets his great love, Alice, and together the couple raise a family, defying hardship, misfortune and poverty.
A saga of courage, fortitude and abiding love, Alice & Luigi is also a story of the coming-of-age of youthful New Zealand, where immigrants strive to create a better life for the generations who will follow them.