A moving account of one woman's journey through Australian/Italian realities.

"I was born in Adelaide, Australia; but the Maria that was to be, had already come into existence in the villages of the Campania region of Italy. Their names were as familiar to me as the name of my own street. I grew up as part of a tapestry, rich with the colours of many realities, woven with the threads of many places, spaces and times."

Five generations of Italian Australians.

This is the story of Maria, a young Australian/Italian who travels back through the Tapestry that is her heritage. She picks at the multiple threads, knots and tangles that wove the fabric of her upbringing by Italian immigrant parents and physically travels back through her Italian history in a land familiar yet foreign.

Meet the women and the men who resisted the rules with both joy and pain: from the great-grandmother branded the village witch to the grandmothers refusing to marry men they did not love; to Maria's parents plotting as teenagers in love to get away to freedom in Australia only to find new rules and prejudices; to Maria facing rules and expectations from both "the Australians" and "the Italians"; to her child Steph marching in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

"Whatever gender, whatever culture, Maria's story belongs to all of us."
Melina Marchetta - author of Looking for Alibrandi.