Greeks, Greeks, Everywhere!

 

Looking for some tasty souvlaki?

Search not just in Athens but in Boston, Chicago, or—especially—in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Greeks, along with an overflowing handful of other ethnicities and nationalities—including Jews, Irish,

Armenians and so many others—are scattered all over the world. 

Mostly, just as with Greece, that’s due to a poisonous stew of reasons—usually poverty and lack of

jobs combined with political instability and deadly repressions.

So it is that Kronos, my modern Greek family saga being published for the first time in the

United States this spring, is situated among the Greek expatriate community in Boston as well as back in the

Greek mainland and islands.

How that happens reflects some of the greatest crises of modern Greek history.  Greece languished

economically as well as politically under Nazi Occupation during World War II. That struggle morphed into a

bitter three-year civil war between the Greek left and right, resulting afterward in a purge of leftists

and Communists. In the subsequent chaos and devastation, one of the main characters in Kronos

—Christos—was among the thousands who fled for his life. He joins his father who already had a

small fish restaurant in Boston.

Greeks work hard and have a special gift for terrific restaurants, not just on the mainland

and islands but wherever they settle. In my book over the following years in New England,

Christos and his father prosper in what became their landmark Boston waterfront restaurant.  The novel

chronicles their resilience, as Christos, like many Greeks in America and elsewhere,

branches out into politics. Kronos chronicles how Greeks resettled into America, thrive and become

a major success story in the melting pot that has been the USA.

Yet the novel also tells a darker side of the immigrant story in America, not just for Greeks

but for the other “huddled masses”—the Irish, the Slavs, the Germans, all the others—who came for a

fresh start. In their Greek restaurants during his first years in America, Christos and the others battle

homesickness, loneliness, and a sense of dislocation that never quite goes away.  Christos, like many

others, left a much-loved girl behind in Greece. The story of Greeks in America is about this ever-present

sense of sadness as well as opportunity. 

That story was played out millions of times in postwar America as well as on the pages of Kronos.  

Greeks still cluster together in their American homes away from home. Many live in the biggest

American cities of the East and Midwest:  New York (especially Astoria), Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and

Detroit.  Florida has always been a mecca, and Tarpon Springs is the hub. California, in recent decades,

has also attracted its resettled Greeks.

In every locale, Greeks have a Greek Orthodox church nearby, and often there are community

sales with the church ladies cooking the best of homemade Greek food.  Of course, there are Greek

restaurants.  Souvlaki stands abound.  Good feta cheese is on sale in every worthy delicatessen. It’s easy to

find Kalamata olives in grocery stores.  

In Kronos, as in real life, the Greeks of America are a heartening success story.

But in Kronos, always, with Christos as with so many of those who became refugees from the land

that they loved, there is always a secret desire and wish.  Will I ever go back?  Kronos tells that story, too.

Kronos ~ Now Available on Amazon Kindle!

Image created by Nanci Arvizu using Night Café AI