About the Author

Peter D. Cimini

Peter D. Cimini is an educator, inventor, and writer who holds two United States patents. He obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees from New York University, spent two years in the military, and taught in the New York City Public Schools for three years, where he met his wife, Virginia. Peter, his wife, and three children moved to Connecticut in 1970 where he worked as a curriculum specialist for the Newington Public Schools for twenty-two years before retiring to learn the art of writing. The Secret Sin of Opi is Peter Cimini's first novel.

Stories about the Ciarletta family originate from the author's recollections of actual events that he experienced growing up in an Italian family in the Bronx, New York, in the mid-twentieth century. The beginning chapters provides an intimate glimpse into the life style of a first generation Italian Immigrant family: Bella Figura, the use of the word gravy for their main Sunday meal, the length of Italian greetings and goodbyes and other cultural customs and behaviors important to Italian families of that period are described in a caring but humorous manner.

About the Town of Opi

In the Italian province of L'Aquila in the region of Abruzzo, there is a mountain town called Opi. In this novel, author Peter Cimini describes Opi and the surrounding area as it is today and has been for centuries. Even though Opi is a real, town, the author notes that the story of captivity is fictional. The house where the protagonist is held is the house where Peter Cimini's grandparents lived and where his father and uncle were born during the late 1880s.

Peter D. Cimini

author

"I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.