Between The Sauce, Stars and Heaven: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Tables That Raised Us

Between the Sauce, Stars and Heaven is a lushly told memoir of one family's century-long climb from a sun-baked village in southern Italy to the Sunday-scented kitchens of New Jersey-and the sky-wide promise of America.

From twelve dollars sewn into a steerage coat to a panoramic front porch that became the Basenese command center, Lou Basenese Jr. traces four generations of grit, garlic, and grace. He introduces readers to:

• Gabriel & Donata-the Ellis-Island newlyweds who traded olives and poverty for factory whistles and freedom.
• Uncle Angelo-roguish charmer, porch pick-pocket, legend gone too soon.
• Louie & Eva-parents who stitched faith into every meal and discipline into every heartbeat.
• Christopher-a son lost to fentanyl poisoning, whose final letter still rewrites the author's soul.

Along the way Lou survives Wall-Street boardrooms, a shattering business collapse, and a twelve-minute death on a California sidewalk-revived only by the relentless CPR of his wife, Laura.

Threaded through with handwritten recipes, small-town football nights, and a near-audible chorus of Italian-American aunts, Between the Sauce, Stars and Heaven is a testament to second chances, table-wide forgiveness, and the stubborn belief that even the heaviest stories can rise-like a ladle of Sunday sauce-toward heaven.