Review: "This story of a mother's life drawn in the signature of her daughter, is a rare treasure of authorship containing feminine insight of a woman's inner thoughts. Both the burdens and victories that happen when following the longings of the heart are embraced as the Vienna, Austria, born heroine, Lilliana, balances her feelings between the man she loves, and the father of her daughter." Stan Starbuck, Artist, WI, USA. http://www.eyebalm.com
Vita aka Kristina aka Karina, nicknamed A Lady For All Seasons, was an actress as well as an author and journalist, and more photos of her stormy, globe-trotting, universe-tripping life, can be found at www.ladyliterature.com
Kismet seems to have decreed that author editor journalist VITA KRISTINA O'DONNELLY, aka Vita Vendresha and Karina di Cuore, should lead a globe-trotting, multi-cultural, chameleon-life wrought with romance and drama, and thus end up writing thought-provoking exotic novels. Her odyssey began with her birth in Rome, Italy, after the Second World War. Her father Sami Alberto, aka David Vendresha, was a freedom-fighter, journalist and editor, and her Austrian mother Geraldine von Landeck, an opera singer and his best comrade-in-ideals.
Having met in Vienna, Austria during the raging fires of the Second World War, and married in Prague, Czechoslovakia, David and Geraldine then settled in Rome, Italy, at the end of the war, and Kristina was born 2 years later. A short while after, due to political persecution, the threesome had to leave Italy and settled in Turkey.
Growing up in Istanbul, in the 1960s, Kristina fell in love with Turkey and her gallant people. She was a child film-star and later a poet and a journalist and published a daily column in the major Istanbul daily. A die-hard romantic and idealist imbued with a can-do, will-do spirit, she strove to the best of her abilities to champion the rights of the down-trodden. At the age of 17, she defied her parents, eloped and married a 44-year old Turkish artist, who had convinced her that he shared her inclinations. The the union produced a much beloved son, Faik Kurt. However, the April-December marriage of an artist and writer, was soon confronted by the realities of life and sunk in stormy seas.
Six years later, Kristina had no choice but to leave, under traumatic circumstances.
After her arrival in New York, she restarted her life virtually from point zero. Although fluent in German, Turkish, Italian, her English could be termed at best "pidgin,' and her experience as an artist, writer and journalist, counted naught in the New World - and walking a road inlaid with razor-blades, she worked as a 24/7 maid, cook, window-cleaner, hair-stylist, door-to-door delivery person, and later on as a real estate sales person.
Few years later, Kristina married her soul-mate, blue-eyed Hibernian, Michael O'Donnelly (which led her to travel throughout Ireland and thus causing her to fall in love with the Irish people as well).
In time she moved up to be employed for the New York Daily News as an advertising rep., and then trailblazed as a newspaper union officer (The Newspaper Guild of America). Not surprisingly, her experiences in this electric environment inspired her to write the contemporary novel, Ride the Eagle (originally published by Worldwide Library; 2nd publishing by Rose International Publishing House). Readers called this novel "... a piece of Americana and a celebration of idealism." Ride the Eagle was sold in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Spain, and Australia. (In May of 2003, Ride the Eagle, retitled as Sevgili Dusmanim (Beloved Enemy) was published in Turkey, by Epsilon Publishing House.)This was followed by the Turkish translation of The Scorpion Child, retitled as Sonsuzluga Isyan.
So far Kristina O'Donnelly has published 9 novels, with 5 more sitting in the pipeline.
And so, her quest to touch and perchance to help heal, the Universal Human Heart, goes on ....
The proverbial question begs: CAN YOU GO HOME AGAIN?
