Zoë Boccabella

When: Tuesday 10th March 2015, 7.30pm
Where: MALT CAFÉ, 23-25 South Concourse, Beaumaris
Cost: Book & ticket together for just $50
Also includes admission & finger food.
Beverages at bar prices.
*Only at time of ticket purchase
*Only one specially priced book per ticket
**Phone credit card bookings accepted**
Ticket Only $35
Phone: 9589 4638
E-mail: read@beaumarisbooks.com.au

JOE’S FRUIT SHOP & MILK BAR:
'Nonno Anni gives me a nudge. "You know, when I first came to Australia, I
knew that my life would change forever.’"

Leaving the small village of Fossa in Italy in 1939 to meet a father he barely
remembered in a place that was far from everything he knew, fifteen-year-old
Annibale Boccabella arrived in Australia determined to make a go of it. It was a time when everything was changing and anything seemed possible .

More than 70 years later, in 2011, Zoe Boccabella and her family hurriedly try to save the treasured belongings of Annibale and his wife Francesca – Zoe’s
grandparents – from the rising waters of the Brisbane River. When Zoe sees the sign from their old fruit shop and milk bar about to disappear beneath the floodwater, this triggers in her a realisation that while she has long looked to Italy to discover her migrant heritage, much of it happened here in Australia.

In Joe's Fruit Shop & Milk Bar, Zoë Boccabella artfully weaves her own
experiences with those of her grandparents, taking us on a journey from Abruzzo and Calabria in Italy to Australian sugar cane fields, internment camps, Greek cafes, and the fruit shop and milk bar that was the focus of a family's hopes and dreams for the future.

Zoe is the author of the acclaimed memoir Mezza Italiana.

She lives in Brisbane.