Dago Red is an interconnected group of stories, exploring the life of aging coalminer Louis Dominick, now bound to a nursing home he cannot escape. The coalmines of Appalachia and the immigrant families who found their lives lived and lost for coal will be investigated through the point of view of Louis. He is now past ninety and no longer works in the mines, but he cannot escape the identity with which he has been branded; he will always be a coalminer. The white walls of the nursing home begin to parallel the black walls at which he used to pick and shovel. Louis’s reliance on family after his body deteriorates reinforces another reality of his life: he is still an ethnic kid, bound to family.
Seven stories are from Louis’s perspective in the third person point of view. They range from before he enters the nursing home, while still in his very active seventies and eighties, to his time there. Another is in third person from the perspective of Louis’s father, Giacomo Domenici, briefly detailing his trips to the United States before settling in River City, Ohio and his decision to change the family’s name to Dominick shortly after a mine explosion changes his family forever.
Three stories are in first person, Appalachian and Italian-American dialect, from the present tense perspective of a young Louis hauling moonshine for prohibition-era bootleggers and Louis as he is now in Lakeside’s Golden Community. After a family tragedy, the boy Louis leaves school and begins picking and shoveling. Stories from a first person point of view of the older Louis will range from moments in the nursing home to streams of consciousness regarding family, coal, dogs, and religion.
The deterioration of a life and the bonds that develop between human beings not because of color or creed, but rather mutual hardship, whether it is in a coalmine or a nursing home, are the primary concerns of Dago Red.