UNITED STATES AUTHOR · CHILDREN · FICTION
Lucia Nevai
EVERY NOW AND then I return to poor black community I lived in or visited during my childhood.
— from Salvation
Most acclaimed
Salvation
"Inspired by the fresco cycles that depict the life of St. Francis of Assisi, Valerie Martin tells the life of Francesco di Pietro Bernardone in a series of vividly realized "panels" of moments both ordinary and crucial: on the road, in the company of friends, alone in his meditations. She draws from myriad sources, including Francesco's own words, and has arranged these scenes thematically, in the manner of the early hagiographies, moving roughly backward in time.". "We begin with the dying Francesco and the rivalry for his body among the towns of medieval Italy. The old friar, exhausted by illness and the divisions within his brotherhood, gives way to the zealous missionary who joins the Fifth Crusade, confident that he can convert the Egyptian sultan. We see the unwashed and innocent revolutionary, unafraid to lecture a pope on Christ's message; his mystical friendship with Chiara di Offreducci, a nobleman's daughter who turns her back on the world to join him; and finally, the frivolous young Francesco on the deserted road where his encounter with a leper leads him to an ecstatic embrace of God.". "Salvation is at once a window into a medieval world whose physicality and purity have never been rendered with such visceral power, and a dazzlingly original portrait of the man whose legend has resonated through the centuries."--BOOK JACKET.
Seriously
2004
"Tamara Johanssen is pushing thirty and life has taken an unplanned turn: her successful sister, her only living relative, has banished her from Manhattan to the rural crossroads of Dustin in upstate New York. Put under the watch of an attractive, married attorney, Tamara soon finds love and other salvations." "Buoyed by her romantic affair and her sister's pocketbook, Tamara gains the confidence to establish a modest art gallery that both engages her gifts and enriches her meager surroundings. When she was seventeen, Tamara was orphaned in a shocking way and controlled by a predatory teacher. In Dustin, her liberation from trauma and bad love - and Lucia Nevai's warm and hilarious first novel - begins. Population thirty-nine, the hamlet of Dustin is small in size but large in personalities, including Donna and Iris of the womanart factory, specializing in strawberry pot holders; southern transplant Glorine, whose mere voice serves as an antidepressant to Tamara; and Shirley Girt of Girt Real Estate, who calls Dustin "the up-and-coming arts town."" "Tamara cautiously engages with the hamlet's oddballs and eccentrics, eventually learning important personal lessons from their determination, humor, vitality, and heartbreak. These unlikely relationships give her the strength to make peace with her tragic past - and to finally "stay put" in her present."--BOOK JACKET.
Best friends
"Since childhood, Sam Grandy and Roy Courtright have been best friends. They grew up in the same prosperous community, went to the same prep school, and later entered the same university. After Sam's father died, Roy's father looked after him. At one point Sam dated Roy's sister, Robin. As best friends, they share a close and loving bond, often stronger than the relationships other men share with their girlfriends, siblings, or wives.". "But in the twenty years since their friendship began, their fundamental differences have become more apparent and their relationship has grown strained. More and more often they realize they are opposites - one a womanizer, the other a devoted husband; one careless with money, the other frugal; one independent, the other needy. Do these differences threaten their friendship - or are the dissimilarities what make it possible? Can they escape the ties of their past, or are they intrinsically bound until death?" "When Sam's health begins to falter, he draws Roy into his life again - and into a chain of deceit, sex, delusion, death, and love such as only a best friend could."--BOOK JACKET.