Varina Palladino's Jersey Italian Love Story

 

A lively, fun-loving novel about the exploits of a large, unwieldy and passionate Italian-American family on the brink of rebirth and change.

 

A big, bold, brash Italian-American family is at the heart of Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story. This fun-loving, bittersweet novel by Terri-Lynne DeFino orbits around Varina Palladino, a hard-working, widow. Now happily-single, the 70-year-old manages the family’s local Italian food specialty shop in Wyldale, New Jersey.

 

Many characters and plotlines are threaded through Varina’s life. This includes Varina’s spry, 92-year-old mother, Sylvia, whose is determined to find a romantic match for Varina. With the help of Donatella--Varina’s n’er do well daughter; Sylvia’s granddaughter--the two Palladino women secretly advertise Varina’s singlehood. The boldness of their plan backfires at the same time Varina’s three adult children face their own life challenges. This includes Dante, running the family construction business and flirting with divorce, and Davide, a hair salon owner, who is at odds with his erratic, younger sister, Donatella, who just can’t seem to get her life on track. There’s also good-natured, reliable Paulie, once the Palladino’s neighbor, now their border, who was pseudo-adopted by Varina after he came out as gay and his own family disowned him. When Varina, on her birthday, decides to celebrate by fulfilling her lifelong dream to travel, her decision becomes just one of many life-changing transitions made by each member of the family.

 

From the passions of love and family fireworks, to authentic recipes, Italian superstitions and expressions, DeFino (The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers) serves up a hilariously colorful, contemporary epic where lovably flawed characters and lively Italian details will wholeheartedly charm readers.

 

Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story by Terri-Lynne DeFino

William Morrow & Company, $27.99 hardcover, 9780063228436, 416 pages

Publishing Date: February 14, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 3, 2023), link HERE

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family

An incredibly moving memoir about three women who greatly influenced the life of notable suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra.

Suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra (Payback; Sleepers) shares an intimate, true story about three, strong-willed, determined women who "saved" his life. Carcaterra--"the son of an ex-con and a housewife who spoke only Italian [who] grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan"--was raised watching his mother trapped in an abusive, loveless, impoverished marriage to a man who had murdered his first wife. When he was 14, Carcaterra's mother sent him to Ischia, Italy, to spend the summer with his maternal grandmother, Nonna Maria, and other relatives. The trip proved to be a watershed.

Nonna Maria--wise, dignified and of great resilience--becomes a bedrock, championing her sensitive grandson, who has storytelling aspirations. Upon returning to the U.S., Carcaterra grows determined to forge a writing career, though his mother, Raffaela, belittles his goal. Steeped in misery, Raffaela--a widow whose second marriage is to Carcaterra's volatile father--often resents her son for being his bullying father's offspring. Dutiful, devoted Carcaterra, however, stands by his mother through some cruel, searing rejections. When Carcaterra meets Susan, an editor and coworker at the New York Daily News, he finds a soulmate whose love and support help turn the tide. Carcaterra finally launches his novel-writing career and the couple build a beautiful, sadly shortened, life together.

Many heart-wrenching incidents pervade the traumatic landscape of Carcaterra's life. But the richness of his forthright storytelling gives tender form to sadness and loss, shaping it into a deeply moving narrative about hard-fought familial love and forgiveness.

 

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Ballantine Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780593156711, 240 pages

Publication Date: April 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 30, 2021), link HERE

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany

A delightful romantic story centered on three single women of an Italian family who set off to Italy to break a 200-year-old curse. 

Long-simmering resentments and buried secrets permeate The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, a romantic, beautifully rendered, sweepingly complex family saga.

 

Emilia Antonelli, 29, of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, is a second-generation Italian American. She lives a simple, manageable life, resigned to remaining single forever, working in the family delicatessen and bakery, while also secretly pursuing a "little writing hobby." Emilia lives under the shadow of a family curse that goes back 200 years: all second-born daughters are cursed to live a life without love. After their mother died, Emilia and her older sister, Daria, were raised by their mild-mannered father and the domineering Nonna Rosa, their mother's mother and the surly, infinitely controlling backbone of the family. Nonna Rosa favors Daria, the first-born granddaughter, and belittles Emilia.

 

Emilia's life takes a drastic turn when she receives a letter from Paolina Fontana, her long-lost great-aunt, who lives in Philadelphia. "Aunt Poppy" is flamboyant, artsy and colorful. She is Nonna Rosa's younger sister, shunned by the family decades earlier. But Poppy writes to Emilia and Luciana, another second-born cousin, offering to treat them both to an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy to celebrate Poppy's 80th birthday. At the cathedral in the town of Ravello, Poppy intends to reunite with her one true love, with the intention of also breaking the family curse.

What ensues is an exciting excursion through Italy--its culture and fineries; romance and history--for the three women. Aunt Poppy proves warm, charming and wise. Lori Nelson Spielman (Sweet Forgiveness) provides first-rate storytelling and nuanced, clearly defined characters that will captivate readers right up to the surprising finale.

The Star-Crossed Sistersof Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman

Berkley-Penguin, $16.00 Paperback, 9781984803160, 400 pages

Publication Date: November 27, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 27, 2020), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (October 23, 2020), link HERE

Italian-American Pilgrims

From My Shelf

In my novella Cold Comfort, a workaholic photojournalist returns to an Italian-American enclave in Rhode Island to spend Thanksgiving with her only remaining relative, a hip 96-year-old aunt who texts and blogs. Challenged by a blizzard and a blackout, the aunt is intent on serving the family's traditionally Italian, seven-course Thanksgiving feast when a character off-handedly remarks, "Maybe your aunt thinks the pilgrims were Italian?"

With Italians, it's always about the food. But Italian-American culture has brought more to the American table than just culinary prowess. Their immigrant influence has distinctly touched all the arts--especially the literary landscape heralded by Gay Talese, Francine Prose, Mario Puzo and Adriana Trigiani.

Joseph Luzzi launches My Two Italies, his deeply personal Italian-American memoir, with a story about how, as a boy, a beloved aunt arrived at his house one morning and gave him a pet rabbit that, hours later, wound up served on the family dinner table. This is just the beginning of Luzzi's historical examination of the contradictions imbued in Italian culture both in the U.S. and abroad.

In All This Talk of Love, novelist Christopher Castellani lovingly explores the hopes, wishes and dreams of the Grasso family, Italian-American immigrants and their offspring, who, in this last book in a sweeping trilogy, must cope with their roots, the price of sacrifice and loss, myths and memories.

Italian-American writer Ann Hood chronicles a strongly feminine point-of-view in her novel An Italian Wife, a multi-generational saga centered on Josephine Rimaldi, a young woman who journeys from Italy for an arranged marriage and how the trajectory of her life is sensuously infused by family, faith and love.

Maybe after you whip up some Turkey Tetrazzini and Pumpkin Pie Gelato from your Thanksgiving leftovers, you'll be inspired to crack the cover on a book penned by a "pilgrim" of Italian-American descent. 

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (11/18/14), link HERE 

COLD COMFORT, New Novella: Featurette

NORTHJERSEY.COM : ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT : BOOKS

Local Author releases new novella, “Cold Comfort”

PASCACK VALLEY COMMUNITY LIFE

October 16, 2014

Click HERE to read the feature

COLD COMFORT is available for purchase wherever e-books are sold.

Click on licks below to purchase novella at:

Untreed Reads (direct from publisher)

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

iBooks

Google Books

Kobo

COLD COMFORT by Kathleen Gerard

Publishing Date: October 13, 2014

Publisher: Untreed Reads LLC

ISBN: 9781611877212

ASIN: B00NFPVKEM

Novella: COLD COMFORT by Kathleen Gerard

Cold Comfort is a very special story about the bonds of family and old flames—and the unexpected power of love. I hope this novella will warm your heart...

Here is a brief synopsis:  It's Thanksgiving weekend and photojournalist Anna Maria "A.M." LaRusa returns to Federal Hill, a small Italian-American enclave in Rhode Island, to spend a quiet holiday with her only remaining relative, her Aunt Minnie, a 96-year-old who texts and has a blog. But when an anticipated blizzard nor'easter threatens the region, there is a change in plans. As A.M. and her aunt prepare for the holiday and the storm, A.M. unexpectedly runs into a man she hasn't seen in ten years—a man whom she still refers to as "the guy who broke my heart in college"—and her weekend and her life are suddenly upended. Stuck amid the cold, snowy deep freeze that paralyzes the region, A.M. begins to wonder if her wounded heart from a long-ago unrequited love will ever thaw.

The novella is available for purchase wherever e-books are sold !

Link HERE for Amazon  (Kindle)

Link HERE for iBooks

Link HERE for Barnes & Noble  (Nook)

Link HERE for Rakuten-Kobo

Link HERE to order via Google Books

As always, I appreciate your support and encourage you to share your review about the story on Amazon, iBooks, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, Google Books etc.  



And thank you, in advance, for passing on this information to other readers!

 Be sure to check out my other titles on Amazon and iBooks!

Cold Comfort (a novella) by Kathleen Gerard

Histria Books, 99 cent e-book, ASIN: BOONFPVKEM, 61 pp (215 kb)

Publication Date:  October 13, 2014

Heart of Palm

A hot, sweltering Florida summer is the setting for Heart of Palm, a debut novel by Laura Lee Smith. The story centers on three months in the lives of the Bravo family of Utina, a sleepy little town near St. Augustine, where Palm Sunday palms and moonshine once offered a prosperous economic existence. But that was years before. Times have changed for the town and for the Bravos, whose long-held properties on the Intracoastal Waterway are of great interest to enthusiastic land developers. What will it take for the Bravos to sell?

The prospect dredges up repressed emotions and looms over the family that consists of the matriarch, Arla, once a "perfect," striking red head and her adult children - Carson, a philandering investment manager with secrets; Frank, the dutiful son and proprietor of "Uncle Henry's," the family's restaurant on the waterfront; and Sofia, an emotionally wounded woman with hair as red as her mother's used to be and a fiery temper to match. But it is Dean, the patriarch, whose absence casts a long shadow over the family's past, as old wounds, secrets, heartbreaks and missed opportunities have woven themselves into the fabric of the present - and maybe even the future, too.

Well-developed characters confronted by an undercurrent of change propel this unhurried family saga. Smith is a careful, detailed writer who assembles big, bold, well-drawn scenes - moments from the everyday lives of the Bravos that resonate with deeper insights into how personal regrets and longings shape the fates of all involved.

Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith

Grove Press,  $25.00, Hardcover, 9780802121028, 496 pp

Publication Date: April 2, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/16/13), click HERE.