At sixty-six, Lorenzo Carcaterra finds it easier to reflect on the past than ruminate on the future. "By the time you reach my age," he writes, "you have witnessed too much loss to not be aware of what lies ahead." This turn to the past inspired a poignant memoir about the women who made him the man he is today. His Italian grandmother, Nonna Maria, gave him his first taste of a loving home during the summers he spent with her as a teenager on Ischia,...