In River of Memory, the bestselling author of The Scots-Italians, Tales of the Savoy and The Big Men tells the story of his long and eventful life. Joe Pieri came to Glasgow from Italy in 1919, when he was one year old. His parents, like so many other Italian immigrants, came to work in the city's newly popular fish and chip shops. He was always aware that he was something of an outsider - a 'Tally' to his Glasgow schoolmates, the 'little Scottish boy' to his relatives in Italy. Yet, after leaving school at 13 to work in his father's fish and chip shop, he settled well into Scottish life. His father's shop, the legendary Savoy, served Glasgow's teeming crowds of night people. Policemen would be taking a break from the beat in the back of the shop, while drunks, underworld figures, bookies' runners, entertainers and wee hard men thronged the front. The business flourished, and as a young man Joe enjoyed a standard of living better than many of his customers. Then came the Second World War. Suddenly, he was no longer a familiar face in the local community but an enemy of the country. He and every other male of Italian birth in Scotland was rounded up and imprisoned.
Eventually, he was sent over U-boat-infested seas to spend the rest of the war in an internment camp in Canada. After the war, Joe returned to Glasgow to try to revive a badly shattered business. These were hard years when rationing of cooking ingredients meant reliance on a booming black market. Joe married a Scots girl, Mary, against family resistance at the idea of marrying outside the close-knit Italian community. As time went by, prosperity was gradually built up once again, until Joe and his brother owned a chain of restaurants, became leading figures in the local business community, and he was able to buy a holiday home in Majorca. These experiences are retold in Joe's compulsively readable style with a cast of many colourful characters. Readers who enjoyed Joe's earlier books will not be disappointed by this sparkling autobiography.