This Week At Silver's Reviews

 

See you this last week of May for some bookish fun.

Book Club??

 

Are you in a book club? or maybe you are in more than one book club? or maybe you WANT to be in a book club? :)

Let everyone know.

Showcase of MIA by John Lansing and a $25 Amazon Gift Card and Print Book Giveaway

MIA

by John Lansing

May 20 - June 14, 2024 

Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Mia, is the origin story of retired inspector Jack Bertolino as a young undercover, NYPD narco-busting detective and his relationship with Mia, his confidential informant.

Mia, a former Miss Colombia, has the kind of beauty that can make a grown man contemplate leaving his wife, his job, and his kids. She’s a complex character, with a painful backstory, who signs on with Jack to help him infiltrate, and take down, a heavy hitter in the Colombian drug trade. Mia has ice water in her veins and is already responsible for delivering large amounts of cocaine, and millions of the cartels cash into the government’s coffers.

This is Jack and Mia’s story. How Mia became a confidential informant, her evolving relationship with Jack, and how the life and death case they break wide open becomes the prequel to The Devil’s Necktie.

 

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Crime Thriller
Published by: White Street Press/ Karen Hunter Publishing
Publication Date: June 4th, 2024
Number of Pages: 252
ISBN: 979-8-89456-000-7 (Print) | 979-8-89456-899-7 (Digital)
Series: The Jack Bertolino Series, Prequel
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Jack Bertolino’s early morning shower gave up the ghost long before he swiped his long-term pass to gain entry to the Staten Island Ferry. Once he landed in the City, he headed for Tango 23’s base of operations. There he picked up his NYPD plain-wrap sedan. The ninety-degree temperature, wetted by ninety-five degree humidity, made a mockery of the air conditioner in the Ford Crown Vic as it crawled through commuter traffic headed for LaGuardia. The air was thick, the stench of exhaust on the Grand Central Parkway overwhelmed as Jack dodged a pothole, rattled into the airport parking lot and came to an engine-clicking stop next to DEA agent Kenny Ortega’s government issue.

The joint narcotics task force case was in its sixth month. Jack had agreed to meet a few old friends and a new confidential informant who had arrived from Miami via Colombia. This CI claimed to be able to provide entry into the inner workings of Manuel Alvarez’s illicit drug operation.

Alvarez, a notorious Colombian trafficker, had been on Jack’s radar for more than a year. Alvarez was responsible for importing a thousand keys of cocaine into Miami on a monthly basis, and the poison

was dripping into New York City. Jack wanted Alvarez’s head on a pike.

At thirty-eight, Jack was already a lieutenant, the boss of the narco-rangers called Tango 23. His crew had great success shutting down drug and money-laundering cells in the five boroughs, piling millions of dollars of the cartel’s money into the city’s coffers.

Jack was a handsome, unpretentious man with thick dark hair he wore brushed back. Creases on his striking face were a roadmap of years exposed to the elements doing undercover narcotics work on the streets of New York City.

As he stepped out of the car, a hot gust of wind blew grit into Jack’s eyes and mouth. It also blasted the long hair of a young woman exiting the passenger side of Ortega’s vehicle, obscuring her face. The deafening sound of a wide-body jet thundered overhead as Jack spit and wiped his stinging eyes.

The woman hand-combed strands of blonde away from her face. When Jack’s vision cleared, he was momentarily stopped in his tracks. The woman was drop-dead gorgeous.

He nodded to Sal Traina, a member of the Tango group, and shook the hand of Mia Ferrero as Ortega made the introductions. Mia, an ex-Miss Colombia, was the confidential informant. Kenny Ortega, the Miami-based DEA agent, was Jack’s partner on the drug task force.

Nick Aprea, a detective from the LAPD narcotics division, had flown in from Los Angeles, where a large quantity of the illicit drugs ended up. He ducked low as he slid out of the back seat, wearing a black leather jacket in the New York heat, and led with a wolfish grin as he proffered a hand the size of a baseball glove. “Jack, good to be back in business.” Aprea was tall, hard, and took life as it came. He had arrived with serious skin in the game. A few years back, his partner had been gut-shot in an Alvarez–Delgado operation. Nick had put fifteen hundred keys of coke on the table, and his partner had been put in an early grave. When Jack invited him to the party, Nick jumped at the chance to deliver some retribution.

Mia signed on to the joint operation between the NYPD, Miami DEA, and LAPD to infiltrate Manuel Alvarez’s operation and help put away a

heavy hitter for the Colombian cartel. She was a proven commodity, already wealthy from delivering large quantities of cocaine and cash to the United States government’s coffers in their ongoing war on drugs. The Feds had a formula in place for paying informants. The bigger the bust, the larger the payoff. A nice way to fatten your wallet, an easy way to die.

Mia started playing Jack—who had a reputation of being a straight arrow—from the moment she touched down at LaGuardia Airport. She’d been summoned for a meeting downtown, organized to get a feel for the principals, define the case, and plan a strategy.

It was time to roll. Sal was sitting in the passenger seat of Jack’s car when Mia rapped on the window. Sal slid out, and Mia stepped in seconds before Jack pulled out of the lot.

“I hope you don’t mind. It was so crowded in the other car,” she said.

Jack wasn’t thrilled. “It’s okay,” he said, always careful when spending time with a CI. First of all, rules and parameters of the relationship had to be set in place, until the informant was proven trustworthy. Too many things could go wrong. Jack was career building and didn’t need any bullshit slowing him down. He had a line in the sand when dealing with informants, and although he always treated them with respect, sharing his personal life was a nonstarter.

Mia started talking rapid fire. Her English was lightly accented but flawless, and Jack chalked her excited banter to nerves.

“I wasn’t supposed to fly first class, but I used my frequent-flyer miles, and thank God because the plane was full, and I was in the air for so many hours. Should I call you Jack or Mr. Bertolino?”

“Lieutenant works.”

“Oh, very formal. It’s so hot in here,” Mia play-whined, and undid the second button on her blouse as she turned to face Jack. “Are you a by-the-numbers kind of guy?”

“Something like that.”

“I know a lot of Italians in Medellín. Not a formal one in the mix. Very sexy though, Italians in general, don’t you think?”

---

Jack kept his eyes trained on the traffic. “Never given it much thought.”

“Oh, I have. Very much so.”

Jack wasn’t going there. He hoped Mia would lose herself in the approaching view of the New York skyline and stop talking. Instead, she seemed content to stare at Jack who was growing increasingly uncomfortable, but didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with a woman who could break his case wide open.

“And the police in general, what do they call it? Mucho testosterone. You can’t hide it, Jack—I mean, Lieutenant.” Mia’s smile was sly, and Jack kept his eyes on the road, not wanting the conversation to get out of hand.

“Your nose,” she said knowingly, “that must have hurt.”

Jack had a bump on his otherwise straight Roman nose. It was a gift from a crack dealer named Trey, who he traded punches with outside the Red Hook projects in Brooklyn. Trey went to jail, and Jack had a reminder every morning when he shaved to keep his right fist higher and jab with his left.

“Do you like sex on the beach?” Jack hoped she was talking about the cocktail and didn’t respond. “What about sex in the car?” Mia said and ran a manicured nail down his thigh. “I love giving blow jobs, I mean, giving oral sex.”

Jack shot a look in the rearview mirror, tried to remain stoic, but he was getting hot under the collar. He was doing sixty and Kenny Ortega’s car was tight on his bumper. Jack glanced in the rearview again, and saw the men in the trailing car laughing.

He’d had enough. He signaled and pulled the wheel hard to the right, sending Mia sliding against the passenger door. As horns around him started blaring, he skidded to a tire-screeching stop on the shoulder of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. He was followed by Ortega, Nick, and a few other smirking detectives in the second car.

Jack knew he’d been set up. He picked up the radio and raised Ortega. “Get this woman out of my car.”

Mia feigned being hurt. “Is it something I said?” Over the intercom, Ortega and his crew were howling. Mia jumped out of Jack’s car, her

face split into a sultry grin, and she winked. “Just having some fun, Lieutenant.”

Jack was the only one on the crew not laughing. He pulled back into traffic, riding solo, and dialed his home number.

Jeanine answered on the second ring. “Are you all right, Jack?”

“Huh?”

“An afternoon call. It’s usually bad news.”

“Oh, no, not today. Just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Hmmm, okay... Good.” Jeannine could read Jack’s mood and wasn’t buying it.

Jack started to relax, the earth rotating back on its axis. “Actually, I just made a pickup at LaGuardia, had a moment.”

“Okay. Are you going to make it home for dinner?”

“Don’t wait on me. We have a TAC meeting, breaking in a new informant. You know how that goes.”

Jeannine knew all too well what that meant. And Jack was hit with the familiar chill on the other end of the line. “Okay, Jack. Your son’s asking what happened to his father.”

“Tell him I miss him.”

“Tell him yourself, Jack,” Jeannine said quietly before hanging up the phone.

Jack stifled his growing anger, fully aware that he was an absentee father. From his point of view, he was building a secure life for his family, and they all had to make sacrifices. It was a team effort. He knew he was being defensive, but he also knew what it took to rise through the ranks of the NYPD.

Jack snapped out of it when Kenny beeped his horn and rocketed past in the fast lane. He rolled his eyes, slightly amused as Mia, sitting in the back seat, nailed him with a look that was purely X-rated.

***

Excerpt from MIA by John Lansing. Copyright 2024 by John Lansing. Reproduced with permission from John Lansing. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

John Lansing is the author of six thrillers featuring Jack Bertolino—The Devil’s Necktie, Blond Cargo, Dead Is Dead, The Fourth Gunman, 25 to Life, and MIA—as well as the true-crime non-fiction book Good Cop Bad Money, written with former NYPD Inspector Glen Morisano. He has been a writer and supervising producer on Walker, Texas Ranger, the co-executive producer of the ABC series Scoundrels, and co-wrote two MOWs for CBS. The Devil’s Necktie is in development at Andria Litto’s Amuse Entertainment, with Barbara DeFina attached as a producer.

A native of Long Island, John now resides in Los Angeles.

Find out more on:
JohnLansing.com
Goodreads
BookBub - @JohnLansing
Instagram - @johnlansingauthor
Twitter - @jelansing
Facebook - @devilsnecktie

 

 

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Spotlight of Liar's Point by Laura Griffin

PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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LIAR'S POINT

LAURA GRIFFIN

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF STEPHANIE FELTY, ASSOCIATE PUBLICIST | BERKLEY & ACE | PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

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A must-read for fans of Lisa Gardner, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Karen Rose, the Texas Murder Files novels are interconnected standalone romantic suspense stories set in a beautiful coastal Texas town.

Each novel follows a new couple—with cameos of beloved characters from previous books!—who fall in love and amidst the danger that threatens them at every turn. 

In LIAR’S POINT, two homicide detectives must separate the truth from a web of puzzling lies while investigating a murder victim’s friends and lovers in Lost Beach, Texas.

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May 21, 2024

Berkley

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PRAISE FOR LIAR'S POINT:

“Wow! Laura Griffin is quite simply one of the best romantic thriller writers out there.”—New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards

"Yet another winner for Laura Griffin. "—#1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh

"I love smart, sophisticated, fast-moving romantic thrillers, and Laura Griffin writes them brilliantly. "—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

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ABOUT LIAR'S POINT:

Two homicide detectives must separate the truth from a web of puzzling lies while investigating a murder victim’s friends and lovers in Lost Beach, Texas.

Detective Nicole Lawson is fed up with her job and nonexistent love life. Her first date in months gets cut short by an urgent call from the chief of police. A body has been discovered at Lighthouse Point, and the medical examiner finds an array of strange clues. When the death is ruled a homicide, the news quickly reverberates through Nicole’s beachside hometown.

 

The Lost Beach police department swings into high gear. Leading the investigation is Emmet Davis, a veteran detective who is Nicole’s fiercest rival at work and also the man she has secretly harbored feelings toward for years. With Emmet calling the shots, Nicole sets out to search for leads, starting with the enigmatic yoga instructor who first discovered the body. Nicole is certain the witness knows more than she’s revealing and may even hold the key to unlocking the case.

When another person turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Nicole sees a bizarre pattern, but no one believes her theory. Under the gun to solve the case, Nicole must put aside her tumultuous feelings and work closely with Emmet to figure out who is targeting her beloved hometown . . . before she becomes a target herself.

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EXCERPT OF LIAR'S POINT:

Nicole Lawson felt naked.

It wasn't the minidress or the strappy sandals. It wasn't even the weird slit that left the entire side of her thigh on display.

It was the Smith & Wesson .40 caliber pistol-or absence of it-that was making her feel exposed. She was so accustomed to those twenty-nine ounces riding on her hip, and the lack of weight was making her antsy as hell.

She checked her phone, then flipped it over.

Nicole glanced around the restaurant, which was wall-to-wall couples, of course. She'd never been in here before, and the decorations grated on her nerves. They were going for elegant, she knew-this was the Nautilus, after all-and it wasn't like the place was covered in pink balloons. The bloodred rosebuds on every table looked nice, actually. Ditto for the votive candles that emitted a soft glow. Really, it was the glitter that was giving her hives, all those tiny gold hearts sprinkled across her table like pixie dust. Just the sight was making her feel even stupider than she already did in this ridiculous dress.

She checked her phone again.

For the first time ever she had a date on Valentine's, and not just any date. Tonight was the date. She and David had gone out three times already. The last time had ended with intense kissing in his car, which definitely would have continued if he hadn't been called into work. Nothing like being summoned to an autopsy to kill the mood.

He wanted to make it up to her, though. Those were his exact words when he'd invited her to this expensive restaurant. And so Nicole had squeezed herself into a low-cut black dress that gave her the illusion of boobs, borrowed her sister's stilettos, and come here to meet him for dinner.

"Are we still waiting?"

Her server was back again with that pitying look that was almost as annoying as the glitter.

She smiled up at him. "We are."

"And would you like some wine, perhaps? Maybe a cocktail?"

"I'm good." She nodded at her half-finished water. "Thanks."

He walked off, leaving her to her silent phone. No text, no voice message. She'd even checked her email, but zip.

Nicole looked around, sure people were staring at her. God, the white-haired couple behind her was already paying their bill.

Her phone vibrated on the table, and she snatched it up.

"Hello?"

"Where the hell are you?"

Not David. She closed her eyes.

"I'm out. Why?"

"Didn't you get the call?" Emmet asked her, and she pictured him at the police station surrounded by the typical Saturday-night chaos.

"I'm off tonight."

"Not anymore."

Her phone beeped with an incoming call, and she checked the screen.

"Listen, that's Denise. I have to go." Nicole got off with Emmet and took the call.

"Hey, what's up?"

"The chief asked me to reach you. He needs you at a scene."

Damn it.

Nicole pushed her chair back and grabbed her purse. "Does he know I'm off tonight?"

"Yep."

She unzipped her little black clutch and left a ten on the table. They were going to have to bus it, even though she hadn't ordered anything.

"Well, what's going on?"

"One sec," Denise said, and cut over to another call. When things were busy, the Lost Beach PD receptionist doubled as a dispatcher. She was also the chief's right hand, doing everything from managing his calendar to deflecting reporters who called in from time to time.

The front of the restaurant was packed with waiting couples. Nicole scanned the bar and the area around the hostess stand but didn't see any tall, handsome doctors looking around for their date. It was 7:32. She'd officially been stood up.

"Nicole?"

"I'm here." She squeezed past the people and pushed open the door. A cold gust hit her, and she stepped back.

"He needs you at Lighthouse Point right away. And keep it off the radio."

"What's going on?" she asked again.

"I'm not sure."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He said, 'I need Lawson at Lighthouse Point ASAP. Keep it off the radio.' That's all I have."

Nicole hunched her head down, wishing for her leather jacket as she strode across the parking lot. It had filled in since she'd arrived.

"What's your ETA?" Denise asked.

"I'll be there in five."

"Roger that."

*************

Excerpted from Liar's Point by Laura Griffin Copyright © 2024 by Laura Griffin. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Laura Griffin is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books and novellas.

She is a two-time RITA Award winner, as well as the recipient of the Daphne du Maurier Award.

Laura got her start in journalism before venturing into the world of suspense fiction. Her books have been translated into fourteen languages.

Laura lives in Austin, Texas, where she is working on her next novel.

**AUTHOR PHOTO AND BIO TAKEN FROM HER AMAZON BOOK PAGE**

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FIND LAURA:

Website

Instagram

The Main Character by Jaclyn Goldis

A trip of the lifetime. 

That is what Ginevra Ex wanted for Rory, Caroline, Nate, and Max.

She wanted them to experience a train trip through Italy and to bond with each other.

Her motive, though, was for them to read her book and to bring to light what she found out about each of them. 

We also meet Gabriele - he is the person who brought them the manuscripts and says something chilling.

What he says is:  one of you has to die in the book.  But does Ginevra Ex mean to bring the things in her book to life?

But then the books disappeared after they left them on their chairs at the beach.  

Who didn’t want anyone to know what is in the book and stole them?

THE MAIN CHARACTER has an interesting premise and beautiful writing, but I was lost most of the time even though I laughed at some of the things the MANY characters did.  

It wasn't a book I was anxious to get back to.  It was confusing and had too many characters to keep track of.  3/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book.  All opinions are my own.

The Incorrigibles by Meredith Jaeger

We meet Annie in 1890 - an Irish immigrant who worked as a housemaid in a wealthy household.

She was tricked by one of the male members of the family she worked for.  He took a ring out of his aunt’s jewelry box while visiting, gave it to Annie, and denied giving Annie the ring when she was accused of stealing it.

Annie was arrested and sentenced to one year in San Quentin with 20 other women inmates.

We follow Annie as she lives through the awful conditions and treatment in the prison.

Then we meet Judy In 1972 as she has left her husband and is struggling to stay away from Tony and find a job.

Judy finds a photo of Annie inside a book at a photographer’s shop where she gets a job and makes it her mission to find out more about Annie.

Judy also attends meetings she learned about from a librarian as she was doing research on Annie.  The meetings focus on the how residents protest against the demolition of areas of San Francisco that the city deems an eyesore.  The problem, though, is that the residents have been living there for almost their entire lives.

Annie will pull at your heart strings as you suffer along with her because of the accusation and while she is in San Quentin.

Judy will have you hoping she finds what she can about Annie, hoping she can keep her husband at bay, and hoping she is able to help the residents.

Ms. Jaeger’s descriptive writing and amazing research pull you in immediately.

You won't want to put the book down because you want to know if Annie survived and if Judy was successful in finding herself and finding Annie's full story.

The Incorrigibles is another marvelous read you won’t be able to put down because of the characters, their stories, and especially if you are a fan of historical fiction.  5/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book.  All opinions are my own.

Spotlight of After Italy by Anna Monardo

PHOTO SOURCE:
TYPORAMA
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AFTER ITALY

ANNA MONARDO

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ALL INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS COURTESY OF SIMONE JUNG | PUBLICIST | BOOKS FORWARD.

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A family memoir of an arranged marriage.

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May 14, 2024 Bordighera Press

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PRAISE FOR AFTER ITALY:

Anna Monardo’s story is one of strength and vulnerability, the two chambers of the immigrant heart.  —Adriani Trigiani, The Good Left Undone and Big Stone Gap

“This beautifully written story of three generations of marriage is a page-turner. Monardo’s honest and reflective memoir reveals intergenerational patterns as intricate as Italian lace. This family story has something to teach us all.” —Mary Pipher, A Life in Light and Reviving Ophelia

“As an Italian-American like Anna Monardo, I relished every detail of her family’s story from Italy to Pittsburgh. But you don’t have to share that heritage to love this exploration of love and marriage, family and motherhood. In After Italy, Monardo is a generous, wise guide into the past and into her own present. —Ann Hood, The Italian Wife and The Stolen Child

“In After Italy, Monardo crafts a moving, compelling, and gorgeously written memoir that is part cultural exploration and part emotional inventory. After Italy is a kind of translation, taking big questions involving society and self and relating them in the universal language of deeply explored personal experience.” —Sue William Silverman, Acetylene Torch Songs and How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences

“To be a woman in an Italian family,” Anna Monardo writes, “is to live in a courtyard, an enclosed world–it is safety, confinement, beauty, deprivation, fulfillment, wretched, wonderful, inescapable.” Her remarkable memoir, After Italy, is a quest to unravel a lineage of broken hearts so she might mend her own. Weaving research with dream with fine embroidered language, Monardo confronts the damage of Old World “patriarchal imperatives” upon three generations of vibrant Calabrian women, including arranged marriage, and the false narratives within the American Dream. After Italy is a story of desire, disappointment, perseverance and liberation, a reminder that love follows its own path, and may arrive unbidden on the salt ocean air, or the smile on an adopted boy’s face. Poignant. Brave. Inspiring. Brava!— Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between  

“After Italy is an epic family history that spans generations, crosses oceans, and excavates layer upon layer of buried sorrows and secrets. It’s also a profoundly personal story told with intimate precision and in exquisite emotional detail. How did Anna Monardo pull off this magical double feat? By understanding that it’s all one big love story. Even when love is absent or imperfect or too lightly or tightly held, it’s always the main event. Monardo knows this intuitively and has written a beautiful and captivating book. I can’t wait to read it again.” —Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion

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ABOUT AFTER ITALY:

From the Publisher: “Like her grandmother and mother, Anna marries quickly, knowing little about her groom.

And like her maternal elders, she struggles in marriage. 

Determined to break the cycle of marital sadness, Anna sets out to investigate her family’s history, from their Calabrian mountain village and WWII survival, to their immigrant life in a Pittsburgh steel town, hoping to better understand the underlying forces that led to her own failure in marriage: Was it an Old World curse or a multi-generational trauma?

What was gained and what was lost when the family’s Italian heritage intersected with American ideals? 

In time, she arrives at her own definition of domestic love by creating a path to the hopeful adoption of her son…”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Photo credit to Chris Holtmeier Foton-Foto

Anna Monardo grew up in Pittsburgh, with strong ties to her Calabrian family.

Her first novel, The Courtyard of Dreams (Doubleday), set largely in Southern Italy, was translated into German, Norwegian, and Danish; featured in the Selected Shorts reading series at Symphony Space in New York City; and nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and recommended for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Learn more about her at her website.

Author Site

Don’t miss out: Anna Monardo will be in town for a Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures: Made Local event on May 23rd!

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AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR:

What made you decide it was time to tell the full story of your family’s experiences?

I recently found a note I wrote in my journal in 2008. My second novel, Falling In Love with Natassia, was published and I was figuring out what to focus on next: new fiction or a family memoir?  I had notes for both projects, but about the memoir, I wrote this in my journal: “That memoir is the book I’ve been afraid of all my life.” When I found that note I knew I didn’t have a choice. I had to move toward what frightened me. I had written some of my family’s immigration story in my first semi-autobiographical novel, The Courtyard of Dreams, but now it was time to write the full story— the true story—about everything I’d fictionalized in Courtyard.

When my mother read Courtyard, she said, “You killed the mother.” And, in fact, the fictionalized mother does die “off-stage.” Within the plotline, her daughter and husband grieve for the mother, but the main conflict is the volatile relationship between daughter and father. With the mother “off-stage,” I didn’t have to write much about the parents’ marriage. In our family, there were aspects of my parents’ and grandparents’ relationships that were never discussed, and fiction allowed me to avoid digging in. As a daughter, I felt I was respecting my family’s privacy, but as a writer, I was being cowardly. Now, it was time for me to step up.

What kind of research and interviews did you do to gather information for your memoir?

After our father died, my brother and I found a trove of his Italian documents: birth certificate, passport, and even his elementary-school report cards—pagelle—which were little booklets. His 2nd- and 3rd-grade pagelle were made of heavy, cream-colored stock and the covers were embossed with the blue-and-red insignia for the Kingdom of Italy. The 4th-grade report card was made of a lesser stock, and it didn’t feel as good in my hands. The cover was red, with artwork depicting a rising block of interconnected towers—nationalistic. Fasces. No more Kingdom of Italy! The 4th-grade report card was issued by the Ministry of National Education, and printed on the cover in thick letters was Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist Youth organization.

In my right hand I was holding the Kingdom of Italy report cards, and in my left, the Fascist-era card. I looked from one hand to the other, and realized that within the course of one summer break, from my dad’s 3rd grade to 4th, the dictatorship moved in. Less than ten years later, he was drafted into Mussolini’s army.

For my mother’s story, I filled a suitcase with her old photographs and went to Pittsburgh, where three of the cousins she’d grown up with went through the pictures with me, identifying people and places I didn’t recognize. We talked for hours. Two of the cousins were okay with the idea of my writing this memoir, but one cousin was not. “Your grandmother always told us you don’t go around talking about family stuff.”  I was grateful for her honest reaction. It forced me to rigorously question myself about whether or not it was necessary to publish our story. Obviously, I decided to publish it, but I needed to examine that decision closely.

How does “After Italy” compare to your previous novels? How was the writing process different?

The novels and the memoir are similar in that they are all narratives built scene by scene. One difference is with dialogue—in memoir, the quotations are remembered; in fiction, they are created. For the memoir, the challenge was to craft dialogue that sounded like the specific voices of people I knew well. Writing fiction, I’m literally putting words into my characters’ mouths. Beyond that, writing the memoir was similar to writing fiction in that, with both, I’m trying to excavate whatever is going on in my heart. The challenge, when writing to explore emotion, is to make each character’s inner life accessible to the reader.

What kind of impact has your Italian-American heritage had on your life?

Though my Italian-American heritage isn’t my only heritage, it’s probably the most significant one. My Italian ancestry is so pervasive within me, I don’t even see it; it just is. But I was also shaped largely by the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was an adolescent, just beginning to pay attention to the news and the world outside our home. Vietnam, MLK’s assassination, Kent State, Woodstock. The call for protest against injustice was powerful—and it was the opposite of the silent bella figura that a well-brought-up Italian American girl was supposed to emulate. The call for personal freedom was in the music, language, clothes, and I embraced that, too. It was thrilling. I was becoming an individual defined by forces beyond my family; and yet, the times assured me I was correct in doing so.

How has your life changed since the events of your book?

Having After Italy accepted for publication by Bordighera Press, which publishes literature and scholarship of the Italian diaspora, means a great deal to me. Writing this book, telling my family’s true story—the darkness and the light—was lonely at times, but with publication, so many beautiful connections have come about. Readers are prompted to tell me their own family stories, and it’s a privilege to hear them. Through Bordighera, I’m connecting with other Italian American writers and their amazing books. My father used to say, “Tutto il mondo `e paese.” All the world is one big village. I feel that now, more than ever.

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