News
A tale of immigration, over generations, from Sicily to Gloucester
By Gail McCarthy | Staff Writer
Gloucester Times Sep 18, 2026
Gloucester’s Maria “Mia” Millefoglie, a fisherman’s daughter, began exploringher Sicilian family’s history and unearthed a story that ran far deeper thanshe ever imagined.
She came to the idea of writing later in life and set out to develop a memoir,which would take her on a journey of tracing three generations of her familyfrom Sicily. The story begins with her great-grandfather who was abandonedas a baby in Sicily in 1870 and later became a stowaway on a voyage to America.
Throughout her memoir, she weaves together the complex web ofrelationships from Terrasini, Sicily, to Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Millefoglie, who earned a master of fine arts degree from the University ofSouthern Maine in 2022, now shares her story in “Daughters of Stone andTide: Loss and Resilience in a Fisherman’s Family,” published by theUniversity of Massachusetts Press. A community event will take placeSaturday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m. at Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester.
The author too was adopted as an infant by her Gloucester Sicilian fishingfamily and knows well the undercurrents and feelings of abandonment, compounded by being raised decades ago in a tight Sicilian community in Gloucester. Her family descends from generations of fishermen, so Gloucester,the nation’s oldest fishing port, would be a natural draw for a new life in the United States...
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I am shaped by the sea. My roots traced back to three generations of fishermen who immigrated from a small village in Sicily to America’s bold Atlantic shores. Raised by an extended Sicilian family in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I first spoke the ancient Sicilian language of my ancestors. My surname, Millefoglie, means “a thousand pages” or “thousand leaves”—a fitting reflection of my journey, one of transitions from the familiar, inquiry and discovery, and my quest to fill blank pages with our stories. I straddle two worlds as illustrated by my work and writing. For years, I worked in the non-profit sector, writing and securing grants to support community needs, publishing "Senior Solutions," and articles on healthcare and technology.
Most recently, I have turned to the stories that live within me. My work has appeared in the anthology Our People, Our Stories (Puritan Press 2024), The Stonecoast Review, The Remington Report, Entropy, and the Gloucester 400+ Stories Project. Though I wouldn’t call myself a “country girl,” I live with my husband, Bill, in the woods along the banks of the Mousam River in Kennebunk, Maine.
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