From Publishers Weekly
In 1950 Greenwich Village, 25-year-old Lucia has it all: a warm and loving Italian family, a papa with a successful grocery business, an engagement ring from her childhood sweetheart, and best of all, a career she loves as a seamstress and apprentice to a talented dress designer at B. Altman's department store. When Lucia meets a rich, handsome businessman whose ambitions for a luxurious uptown lifestyle match her own, her goals for her future soar even higher. Over the next two years, however, her dreams gradually unravel. Sorvino is well-cast as the narrator of Trigiani's (Milk Glass Moon) first-person tale. She ably conveys the confidence, eagerness, and romantic yearnings of youth, as well as the guilt Lucia suffers when she disappoints her loved ones. Sorvino is also adept at providing voices for a large cast of characters: the rich Italian accent of Lucia's father, the scolding tone of her mother, the shy voice of her sister-in-law and the smooth, movie-star tones of the rich stranger Lucia pins her hopes on. This is an engaging, well-told tale about life's unexpected twists and turns, the ways that even small choices have large repercussions and the hopeful notion that sometimes, when you least expect it, you can find happiness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Budding playwright Kit Zanetti is invited to tea by her elderly neighbor, and she is amazed at the apartment full of memorabilia. Her question about a beautiful full-length mink coat begins the story of "Aunt Lu's" long and interesting life. Lucia Sartori, the youngest child and only daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village in the early '50s, is engaged to marry her childhood sweetheart, Dante DiMartino. Almost on the eve of the wedding, Lucia is shocked to learn that his mother expects her to quit her job as a seamstress at B. Altman's department store to stay at home and help her future mother-in-law and to prepare for the children she is expected to have. Lucia resents having to choose between career and marriage, so she breaks the engagement. Later, she meets suave and debonair John Talbot, who sweeps her off her feet. He gives her a beautiful, full-length mink coat. Only after being jilted at the altar does Lucia learn that he is a con man. After this unfortunate event, Lucia's plans to go to California to pursue her career are thwarted when her mother becomes ill. Now she must decide between love and duty or her own happiness. Finely drawn characters move the story along with warmth and humor, relationships in Lucia's big Italian family are lovingly detailed, and there is a strong sense of place. Readers who enjoyed Trigiani's "Big Stone Gap" trilogy (Random) will find that she again tells an engaging story.
Carol Clark, Fairfax County Public Schools, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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