Born in 1936, in Naples, Italy, to a newly widowed mother, he could not know that his Mamma had two other children to raise, and she worked long hours in a bomb factory in war-torn Italy. His father had been killed before he was born, so he never had a father to teach him how to become a good man. WWII provided a severe backdrop and a formative time for Andréa.
When he meets American soldiers at the end of WWII, he dreams of going to America, the “Land of Milk and Honey,” and becoming successful, being able to have enough to eat, to find true love, to have a family, and to actually live the “American Dream.”