Before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) Catholics weren't allowed to attend services in places of worship that were not Catholic. She has a Jewish friend and she and other Catholic friends go to her wedding. Caprice works and socializes with young women of different backgrounds. In fact, in some states women didn't get that right until some time in the 1970's. No, the issue was that in most of the US of the time, women couldn't have their own bank accounts. Also she wants to open a hat shop - and says the obstacle is banks won't lend to immigrants. So every time Caprice mentions her parents speak Italian, it is more likely they spoke Sicilian. Sicilians of the time spoke Sicilian and though some might call it a dialect, each region of Italy had its own language, and they were not necessarily mutually intelligible. There were so many details that this book got wrong which is something I loath is a book that purports to be historical fiction. Some historical figures are central to the story- wealthy women who had projects to support immigrant young women.The main character Caprice is from a very traditional Sicilian immigrant family. The setting is Boston at the turn of the 20th century.
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