by Anna Lawton
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BookExcerpt
Release date: March 7, 2017
Publisher: New Academia Publishing
Genre: Historical, Women's Fiction
Hardback: 246 pages
Rating: 3
First sentence(s):
“Mulberry and Canal, please.”
The cabbie looks at her in the rearview mirror while the car pulls off into the Broadway traffic.
Amy’s Story unfolds on the background of American history, from the late 60’s up until 2011, and takes us through the timeline of how Italian-native Amy (full name, America) creates her success story.
Amy experiences love, heartbreak, friendship, obstacles, success, and more as she moves from Italy to New York City to live by her American father. Following in her father’s footsteps, Amy becomes a successful publisher. Her story intertwines with the story of Stella, her childhood friend, whose unfinished memoir she intends to publish. As Amy edits the manuscript, it is Stella’s story that readers follow as she leaves Italy with her American lover, Jim, a heartthrob who conceals his sensitive nature under a bravado façade, and goes through career achievements and setbacks, and a heartbreaking love story.
Her journey runs parallel to major American historical events―the Vietnam War, student protests and the Kent State shooting, the birth of radicalism and feminism, presidential elections and assassinations, immigration, the Watergate scandal, up to the 9/11 attack and beyond― providing an interesting commentary on the facts that influenced the development of American society over the past 40 years and brought about the current outcome.
Other minor, but captivating, characters complete the picture and sustain the action: Steve, Stella’s husband, conformist and uninspiring; Nik, a passionate and extravagant Russian intellectual; Rosa, once a maid at Amy’s grandmother’s country estate and now married to the owner of a New York pizzeria; and others.
Stella's memoir never gets published, because Amy transforms it into a very successful novel. This twist will have readers reimagining the entire story and Amy and Stella’s tale will remain with them for a long time.
My two-bits:
This story spans the 1930s to the present. Through Stella's life and loves you get glimpses into different eras by way of significant American political historical happenings.
The start is an Italian immigrant experience which I found to be the most interesting.
* review copy courtesy of publisher
