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Salvatore A. Trancucci III was born and raised on Staten Island, New York, surrounded by family stories, neighborhood traditions, and a deep appreciation for the values that shaped the generations before him.
Before becoming an author, he spent twenty-one years with the New York City Department of Sanitation while coaching baseball at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels—experiences that reinforced his belief that character, perseverance, and relationships often leave a greater legacy than public recognition.
What began as a desire to preserve his grandparents’ remarkable sixty-two-year love story became Sonny & Teresa: A Love Story Across Generations—the first in a planned series of novels inspired by true family history. Set in post–World War II America, the novel follows a Staten Island ballplayer and an Iowa nursing student whose chance meeting becomes a lifetime together, exploring how ordinary choices become the inheritance of future generations.
He is also the author of Building Kitchen Skills: Teaching Your Child How to Cook with Fun and Delicious Recipes.
More than anything, Trancucci hopes his books encourage readers to preserve old photographs, ask questions, record family memories, and discover that the most meaningful stories are often waiting quietly within their own families. When he signs a copy of Sonny & Teresa, he almost always writes the same words: Welcome to the family. Not because the reader is related to him, but because somewhere in Sonny and Teresa’s story, he hopes they find a little of their own.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Salvatore A Trancucci III’s Sonny and Teresa begins in postwar Leavenworth, Kansas, where Sebastian “Sonny” Grasso has returned from Army service in Japan to play for the minor league Leavenworth Braves. Teresa is an Iowa-born student nurse at St. Mary’s when a baseball game introduces her to the Staten Island outfielder, beginning a courtship that soon reaches far beyond the ballpark. Sonny hopes baseball will open a future in the major leagues, but Teresa’s aunt Eulalia Anton, who helped raise her after her mother’s death, has already imagined Teresa’s life within the Irish Catholic world she knows. Sonny’s Italian heritage and baseball ambitions make the relationship a source of family conflict. As his season moves quickly, a summer meeting turns into a decision about marriage that could take Teresa from Kansas into Sonny’s life on Staten Island.
Salvatore A Trancucci III’s Sonny and Teresa is a wonderful historical romance based on real life, and I love how married life is the heart of the story. Trancucci does a beautiful job with period details, especially in the Grasso family market, where Christmas music shares the radio with sports updates as Sonny works the till. Sheffield Street is a character in its own right, from the children using a sewer cap as a home plate to Teresa calling them inside for dinner. Sonny and Teresa are wonderful together, and their chemistry is fantastic. After Sonny leads the College of Staten Island women’s softball team to a conference championship, Teresa reads his face over coffee and knows he plans to retire. Well written and full of archival visuals, readers interested in historical fiction about family life will adore this book.
