I've looked in a couple of bookstores now and could not find it. Is it worth the extended search?

I'd say YES ! But I'm biased !!!
In a previous thread I had mentionned the movie they made after it with Sofia Loren, it was called "The Immigrant" over here if I remember well. You really should look for it as well.

SUMMARY :

The widowed Lucia Santa Angeluzzi-Corbo of this beautiful novel combines a great nourishing maternal love with the equally great shrewdness of a vixen and toughness that the contadini call "figatu" ("guts", from "fegato", meaning liver). She is the quintessential immigrant Italian-American mother. Confrontations on the question of male-female relationships between her and her 18-year-old daughter Octa via are typical. Octavia is a girl lashed both with the cultural conflict of the second generation and the sexual conflicts of a virgin grown to maturity.

As the years pass, Octavia comes to realize that the most formidable human being she knows is this mother of hers with her deceptively simple verbalizations. Regarding the question of how to raise O's younger siblings, the mother said to the disgust of the sophomoric daughter,
"if you want a house to give orders in, get married, have children, scream when they come out of your belly, THEN you can beat them, then you can decide when they will work and how, and who works."

I haven't seen the movie, but the novel is very nice. I'd say it's better than the Last Don as far as I'm concerned.

If you don't mind reading it and not owning it, the public library system has it. If your local library doesn't have it they will get it from another branch...I did it like that.

Wow I never knew about that flick, w/ Sofia. She was my childhood "crush".

I have only read the book, but imho, The Fortunate Pilgrim, The Sicilian and Dark arena are Mario's three best books.
They wipe the floor with any of the others, even though they're pretty good too.

Definitely pick it up when you can.

Did some research and discovered that the movie entitled "The Fortunate Pilgrim" had been made for TV only . I hope they'll play it again one day, I'd love to see it again.