Chapter One When her son Billy was sent to Iraq, Angie Dekker purchased fifty-two pairs of athletic socks. She sent him one every week. Like an hourglass, the pile shrunk marking the year until her son returned home. Pair thirty-two was in her hand when the two marine officers appeared at her door. She heard,…
Valentina didn’t know her birthday. As an infant, her mother stuffed her into a turnstile at the Brooklyn Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the nuns’ main interface with the outside world. Maybe she gave the delivery bell a tug before she fled, or maybe the sisters heard a baby’s sobs. All Mother Superior…
At the Naples marina the sun broiled humanity like chops on the grill. Leonardo and Anna were on the street at the edge of the crowd. Peasant men in brimmed caps and ill-fitting vests and women in white blouses and billowing ankle-length skirts held onto wide-eyed children and waited to be called for pre-board inspection.…
Stories and Places I Remember. Humorous and poignant, the twenty-six fiction pieces in Stories and Places I Remember will take you around the world from the streets of Brooklyn to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, including New York, Texas, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, the Middle East, and Italy. Many have an Italian American “flavor.” Here’s the…
