Editorial Reviews: (From Publishers Weekly) Tonelli, a former editor at Esquire and Rolling Stone magazines and author of The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America, offers this personal and solid compendium of Italian-American voices. After enumerating the accomplishments of other Italian-American artists (singers, musicians, actors, film directors), Tonelli compares these highlights with those of other immigrants and asks whether Italians, in fact, need to be recognized for literary accomplishments. The answer is yes, and Tonelli thematically arranges 68 stories, poems and excerpts from memoirs and novels by such categories as "Home," "Mom," "Work" and "Death." The selection of contributors (some dead, most still writing) is anything but perfunctory, and none of the selections gives a stereotypical picture of Italian-Americans (in fact, several contributors even refuse to identify themselves by ethnicity). The book opens with a section from Don DeLillo's Underworld and includes a piece each by Evan Hunter and Ed McBain (who are one and the same, of course). Kim Addonizio and Tom Perrotta have pieces under "Sex, Love, and Good Looks"; no tome of Italian-American literature would be complete without Camille Paglia, Gay Talese, John Fante and Pietro DiDonato. While Tonelli doesn't shy from stories about or figures of the Mafia (Nick Pileggi contributes a section of Wiseguys, as does Victoria Gotti from Superstar), Mario Puzo's only piece is from his first, underappreciated novel, Fortune's Pilgrim, about the immigrant experience. Nick Tosches sets the tone of this beautiful volume with a bold homage to the granddaddy of Italian-American literature, Emanuele Conegliano, better known as Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist for La nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosu fan tutte. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Daughters for Sale continues the author's journey begun in Italian Women and Other Tragedies, Gianna Patriarca's successful first collection of poems (Guernica, 1994). Here is a compassionate search for understanding lives dislocated by the immigrant experience. Through humor, irony, anger, and reconciliation, Gianna Patriarca reveals the fragility and intensity of the unforgettable characters she meets. Their 'songs in dialect' arise from voices not accustomed to being heard in any official culture. These poetic snapshots of women and men will leave no reader indifferent.

Marriage, Kidneys, and Other
Dark Organs : A Memoir

Venera Di Bella Barles was born during the depression in upstate New York to Italian immigrant parents. She encounters a difficult pathway from the hot-blooded upbringing with her authoritarian father, who had one foot in Italy and one in America. The childhood tribulations chewed directly into her spirit. The residue was overpowering. Marriage, Kidneys, and Other Dark Organs reveals, with sadness and wit, her tricky path to maturity. Di Bella Barles spent long years in search of answers to her fears, using humor to cover difficult circumstances; years to take responsibility for her own life; years to allay the anger in having to forfeit her childhood as the family referee; years before she understood her parents and replaced bitterness with forgiveness; years to find the love in all this disorder; years to recognize that the legacy that made her a peacemaker was not always a benefit. Peace at any price. Woven amidst her long-term marriage and two children, were a number of diverse work experiences, which added much to her ‘school of hard knocks’ education. Venera continues to write. She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington with her husband, Edward, and a Wire-Hair Fox terrier, Oliver.
(Book and Electronic Book can be purchased through www.authorhouse.com "Marriage, Kidneys, and Other Dark Organs" Size 2769K)

Venera's new book will be
released in November 2004.

My narrative begins when the protagonist, a writer, stumbles across an article relating to the suicide deaths of three elderly hermit sisters. She visits their Pennsylvania mining town, to research and gather material for her next novel, but the inducement is more personal since she is facing her own mortality. In the hunt to find out why the sisters implemented such a drastic decision, she becomes entwined in the lives of the people of the small village. Even with the code of silence pervasive in the hills, the similarities and dormant mysteries begin to compare to her life. In the end her conclusions are quite different than expected.

At first, the protective towns-men unravel their thoughts cautiously on the subject of the Hinkle family, but as Carmela engages them on a more personal level they allow much of their inner lives to surface. She is amazed at the depth of intertwined subplots, rumors of mysterious rapes, and an old tale of the unfortunate deaths of twins who drowned. The community has pointed a malicious finger at the children's mother, who slowly crumbles under the loss and shame. The mother consoles her grief with alcohol and eventually her own life is forfeited. Nell, the preacher's wife tells it like this:
"Like I said, whoever it was in that house with Amy must have slipped away quick like. Amy jumped into the crick to save those younguns, but the water was too swift and she couldn't catch them. Afore you knew it the babies was taken downstream."
Her head shook from side to side.
"Mmmm," she moaned. "We could hear her screamin' that day, from farm to farm. Sometime God forgets us small people."
Nell stopped to remove her glasses and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "Our volunteer rescue crew came but it weren't no use. Thomas Maas found the dead babes under Stoneman Bridge, tucked together near a boulder. Folks said they was holdin' hands."

Carmela finds she cannot help getting personally involved. The tough men and women of the coal mining community keep her on her toes, sometimes with complete trust and sometimes not. The writer stays at the only motel at the edge of town, run by a thunderbolt black woman named Etta Mae Jackson - she, like many of the women, is strong and outspoken.

Etta Mae leaned over her desk and passed a critical eye on me. "Dem guys din't much like us women in the mines. Afeared we bring 'em bad luck. Din't want us to get our rightful pay for bustin' our backs. Took some time. But us gals stuck together."

Another dynamo, Fannie Gottschalt, runs the local garage and variety store, a worthy woman who befriends Carmela.
"Our cemetery is filled with the other half of our lives. There're just so many cheeks to turn, now ain't there? This face has felt the backside of a hand plenty times. All in the name of love. Now ain't that a bunch of a crap? Damn strange way to show how much you care about someone. Most of it happened after Frank Sr. died. He were a good man. Couldn't find another one like him. I ran into a couple of winners that used me like a punchin' bag. I knew I was in for a tough road, with four young ones. I had to do whatever it took. Money trees don't grow in Pine Grove Haven."