Wait Until Spring, Bandini

Set in a small Colorado town during one winter, John Fante's first published novel follows the Bandini family, poor Italian immigrants trying to get by. The father, Svevo Bandini, trudges through the snow in shoes whose holes he has lined with cardboard torn from a macaroni box he has not yet paid for. His son Arturo, a rascal who dreams of becoming a baseball star, stands at the center of a story drawn from the author's own family. The 1938 novel opens the semi-autobiographical Bandini Quartet, and a 1989 film version cast Joe Mantegna as Svevo, with Ornella Muti and Faye Dunaway.

It appears in Ryan Holiday's Best Book Recommendations of 2011.