By 1929, Alzira de Jesus Soares had survived the conditions of her impoverished village in the north of Portugal, a place called Boucoais - where her father and two younger siblings had died from influenza and starvation. Only months earlier. she had been granted the most unique of opportunities for those in her native homeland: a better life in America. She was to leave behind her mother, stepfather, and two new younger siblings. Speaking no English, Alzira boarded the steamship that would sail to Southern New England at he start of the Great Depression. She was 16. By 1999, Alzira sat quietly in her northern Rhode Island home. Having sponsored 24 family members from her village of Bouçoais to a new life in America, her lifelong actions had needed no words... Except her own. Alzira died on April 26, 2007.
—de Rezendes, Christian