Framing a Life is Geraldine Ferraro's touching memoir of her Italian American family. Like the frame on which her mother once crocheted beads to make a living, Framing a Life draws together a tapestry of immigrant family stories both past and present.

Beginning with the arrival of her grandmother Maria Giuseppa Caputo on these shores in 1890, the author takes us on a grand journey that includes her own vice presidential nomination in 1984 and brings us to the present day, spanning a total of five generations.

In Framing a Life Geraldine Ferraro leads us along her family tree, from her Italian roots to the branches that stretch into the future. Throughout, she draws parallels between her own and other immigrant families and the basic values, including religion and the importance of education, that unite them. She notes that contemporary immigrants from Asia and Latin America are no different from our country's European forebears in their circumstances and their dreams of a better life.

No matter where one's family originated, Ferraro's story has resonance for us all.