The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America: 12,000 Miles in a Buick in Search of Identity, Ethnicity, Geography, Kinship, and Home

Inspired by a mail-order directory of all U.S. residents with the surname Tonelli--could anyone doubt the solicitation letter's hook that the $27.95 book was ``the only one of its kind in the entire world?''--the author, a senior editor at Esquire , set out on a cross-country trip to visit his possible kinfolk to discover the qualities of what he calls the ``Tonelli Nation.'' That nation, we learn here, stretches far beyond the Little Italy of the author's native Philadelphia to locales like the Nebraska ranchlands and the Alaskan wilds. Its ``thousand or so'' citizens comprise a diversity of personalities: a rock musician, a nun, a psychic, a custodian at Disney World, a radio deejay, a convict. The narrative is filled with snippets of the mostly congenial conversations from the author's meetings, including one with the president of the directory firm that started him on his trek. He also reports on his mailed survey, which served as his introduction to the hundreds of households he visited. So what's a Tonelli? Simply an American, as the author shows in his delightful report of his offbeat social experiment. Photos. First serial to Esquire and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. (June)