Description:
An autobiography and biography that is a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author's father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915.
Review Quotes:
"Reading much like a novel, with its rich detail and emotive content, Through a Portagee Gate offers a profound look into the Portuguese immigrant psyche and the evolution of a post-industrial city."--Donald Warrin, author of So Ends this Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling 1765-1927 and Land as Far as the Eye Can See: The Portuguese in the Old West
"Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix's carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart."--Frank X. Gaspar, author of Stealing Fatima and Leaving Pico "Through a Portagee Gate is the story of two men told with novelistic brilliance. Passionate, witty, full of anger, but leavened with equal amounts of hope, it is the most moving biography I've encountered in years-and one of the most remarkable autobiographies."--Llewellyn Howland III, author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History "Through a Portagee Gate is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth account of an American voyage, rich in fable, anecdote, and wit. Charles Reis Felix writes as boldly as if carving scrimshaw about the soles fixed by this father, a cobbler, and the tread of life upon various nearby souls, including his own."--Katherine Vaz, author of Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories