Braintree Writer Turns Grandmother's Immigration Story into Novels

When Nitsa Olivadoti was growing up in Braintree, her grandmother would sit her and her sisters and cousins down at the kitchen table, turn on the radio and tell them stories about Greece, World War II and her journey to the United States.

Olivadoti, as young as nine years old, began taking notes and writing poetry about her grandmother’s life. Years later, Olivadoti sat down again at the kitchen table, this time knowing she wanted to preserve her grandmother’s story for her own children through a work of fiction.

“It’s a piece of history I wanted them to be able to experience,” Olivadoti said. “It is the essence of their roots.”

Cicada’s Choice, published through Amazon last December, is the first in a series of novels about Eleni, a 16-year-old girl from Greece who in the beginning of the first book accepts a marriage proposal from a mysterious Greek-American. It is soon after World War II and she is faced with the consequence of leaving behind her country and a boy who loves her.

Olivadoti weaves together Greek culture, history and geography and Eleni’s complex love story, all of it informed by her grandmother’s memories and her own life experiences.

“I swallow hard once again, riddled with acute pangs of anxiety,” Eleni narrates in the first scene, aboard an ocean liner that has departed from Athens. “I pray this is not my last glimpse of home. A whisper escapes my lips as I think my thoughts out loud without notice. ‘I miss you…’”

Olivadoti’s grandmother lives close to where Olivadoti and her husband Giuseppe are raising their children, Peter and Dina, in Braintree. She is proud of the book, Olivadoti said, and enjoying her life in America thoroughly more than 60 years after emigrating, surrounded by her kids, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

“Sometimes when people go through hard things, they are more appreciative of the little things,” Olivadoti said. “She’s very proud. She’s happy about [the book].”

The second novel, Cicada’s Consequence, is scheduled for release later this fall or early winter. It will focus on Eleni’s arrival to the United States and the history of America at the time. The immigration theme will become an even larger part of the story, Olivadoti said, connecting not just with Greek-Americans but with immigrants from all over the world.

During a recent book signing, Olivadoti said a woman came up to her in tears, saying that Cicada’s Choice reminded her of her own experience leaving Greece.

“It’s not just my grandmother’s story,” Olivadoti said, “it’s so many people’s story.”

Olivadoti studied fine arts and education at Bridgewater State University and later worked as an events coordinator. After her son Peter was born, she decided to stay home to raise her kids and also work on the novels.

When in the middle of Cicada’s Choice, or now Cicada’s Consequence, Olivadoti often wakes up in the middle of the night, prompted by a dream or thought, turns on a light and works quietly while her husband sleeps.

It seems now there is no turning back. Like the character of her book, Olivadoti has come to understand the universal paradox, “You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.”

“I think I’m I writer,” she said.