Gaetano Catelli

SS Daughter Gaetano Catelli

My previous book, SS Daughter: A Love Story, recounts the 1st half of my life: My father fought in Hitler's Waffen-SS during World II. After the war, he became a successful business owner, and married a beautiful woman 16 years his junior. I was their only child.

Mother left us when I was 5, to escape father's volcanic temper. I then became father's "SS Princess" in public, where he treated me to the best of everything. But his physical, psychological, and sexual abuse at home drove me to heroin addiction in my early teens.

Father died leaving me a small fortune, which my addiction consumed in just a few years. I wound up living in a car with the 2 sons I had by then. Mother came to our rescue, bringing me and the boys to live with her in America, where she had built a new life.

As a single mom with an 8th grade education, the only (legal) jobs I could get neither paid enough to cover the bills, nor allowed me enough time to be with my sons.

At the end of the 1st book, I'm 3 months behind in the rent, there's no food in the cupboard, and Christmas is only a few weeks away - which the 3 of us seem certain to spend in an NYC homeless shelter.

This volume, SS Daughter: Only in America, is an account of the many sacrifices I made, including becoming a professional escort, to get an advanced education, to lift my sons and myself out of poverty, and to help many others to change their own lives.

Marlena Berlin