This gripping memoir is both a personal story and a portrait of a distinctive New England place-Fall River, Massachusetts, once the cotton cloth capital of America. Growing up, Joseph Conforti’s world was defined by rolling hills, granite mills, and forests of triple-deckers. Conforti, whose mother was Portuguese and whose father was Italian, recounts how he negotiated those identities in a city where ethnic heritage mattered. Paralleling his own account, Conforti shares the story of his family, three generations of Portuguese and Italians who made their way in this once-mighty textile city.