“A thorough, exacting, and engrossing tale of Capra’s personal and professional life.”

A historical novel dramatizes the life of filmmaker Frank Capra.

In 1903, in search of a better life, Capra’s family moves from Bisacquino, a small village in Sicily it called home for generations, to the United States, starting over in Los Angeles. Pressured by dire financial straits, young Francesco Capra—he is rechristened Frank in America—sells newspapers to help make ends meet while his father, Salvatore, shines shoes. Capra displays signs of “obvious intelligence” at a young age, but his mother shows little interest in his education—a singularly practical woman, she pushes him to work and contribute to the household. Nevertheless, Capra graduates from high school with a flowering interest in the arts and attends the Throop College of Technology, where he is given his first opportunity to seriously study film.

Fuglei studiously catalogs Capra’s rise from inauspicious obscurity to international acclaim—he directs his first low-budget film in 1922 when only 25 years old, and in 1935 his film It Happened One Night wins multiple Academy Awards. The author’s prose is more diligent than literary—she tends to use clichés and can be bloodlessly earnest in her depictions of Capra, which border on hagiographic: “Frank Russell Capra was in America, and he was going to pursue his own freedom and happiness. It was his right now. And no one was going to stop him.” But she thoughtfully portrays the challenges Capra faces in a world that both needs and discriminates against immigrants. In addition, she delicately limns the complex contours of his political commitments and the way he “straddled the line between his Republican beliefs and anti-union sentiments and his leadership of the Academy and the Screen Directors Guild.” Despite its defects, this work delivers an excellent synopsis of Capra’s intriguing and accomplished life.

A thorough, exacting, and engrossing tale of Capra’s personal and professional life.