Positano, on Italy's Amalfi Coast, is the setting for a complex tale that focuses on friendship, love, and the legacy of the past upon the present. The story is passionate, as well as poetic, humorous and rich in folklore. In 1952, thirty year old Miranda Arnold, recently divorced, returns to her native Italy with Johnny, her five year old son. After fourteen years of separation she is reunited with her friend Nina, who lives in Positano with James, her troubled English companion. Although the two young women remain traumatized by their pasts, they have an emotional anchor in one another. On one level, they rekindle their friendship, conversing intimately about what they endured in their fourteen years apart. On another level, as Miranda becomes part of Nina's ever-changing and unsettled orbit, their relationship will be severely tested. Soon the story grows into a complex tale of friendship, love, and the legacy of the war. The two main male protagonists are the mysterious doctor, Danilo Arieli, and the seaman Nicodemo, Danilo's larger-than-life friend. Within the sensuous embrace of Positano, the characters are intertwined in ways both tender and dramatic, as memories about their tragic war experiences continue to implode. The collage of secondary characters adds piquant and humorous moments. A wholeness emerges from all the fragments: love rising above guilt or obsession, life in the face of death, the ability to stand alone and also to love fully. The story concludes with many surprising revelations.
About the Author: When I began writing in English, it was my fifth language. As a young girl I wrote a novel and a collection of poetry in German and short stories in Italian. My family fled our home in Chemnitz, East Germany, at the onset of the Nazi regime. We moved to Italy and then sought refuge in Holland. In 1942, disobeying a German command to leave for a concentration camp, we fled through the maze of Nazi-occupied Belgium and France, finally reaching safety in Switzerland. We arrived in the United States in 1946. I have been writing, in English and in earnest, ever since. My first novel, OUT OF A SEASON, was published in 1968 by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in New York. It was followed by LOVERS & FUGITIVES, published by Mercury House, San Francisco, in 1986. Both novels were favorably reviewed by The NEW YORK TIMES, THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, THE DENVER POST, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, and many other publications. REPLICA BOOKS republished them in 2000 and 2001, respectively. In 2004 my memoir, THE GOOD PLACE, which I translated into German, was successfully published by the CHEMNITZER VERLAG, and later serialized in the FREIE PRESSE, the largest newspaper of the province of Saxony. Replica Books published the original English version in 2006. At the present time, my books are getting back into print at iUniverse, with the help of the Authors Guild. Scenes from an unfinished novel, set in San Francisco, won a grant from the Marin County Arts Council. My short story, WATER LILIES, won an international competition in 1993, and was published in London by The European, a renowned weekly paper. I was recently honored with the prestigious Milley Award for Creative Achievement in the Literary Arts from the Mill Valley Art Commission. Following my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, I taught the Craft of Writing at the College of Marin and my alma mater, and have been on the faculty of the Fromm Institute For Lifelong Learning, at the University of San Francisco, for the last twenty-eight years.