I Can See the Moon, But Not the Stars is the thrilling and insightful life story of Carmela Cantisani, a blind woman who became a world champion skier. At the Third Winter World Championship for the Disabled in 1986, the author won her first gold medals in Alpine skiing. She skillfully weaves the reader through every second of her gold medal-winning races representing the United States. She backtracks her life to the early childhood years she spent with her family on a small farm with no electricity or running water, and then later at a residential school for the blind in southern Italy. She shares stories from the lives of her parents and grandparents through their emigration from, and repatriation to, their native region of Basilicata in southern Italy. The stories include two world wars, daily struggles for survival, and the life-altering diagnoses of hereditary blindness for three of the five siblings in her family. Through many sad and hilarious true stories spanning three generations, Carmela brings the reader directly into the lives and experiences of her family and her own coming of age in the United States.