The Saint of Lost Things: A Novel [Hardcover]

Castellani explores the lives of Italian-American immigrants in this eloquent, leisurely tale about dreams and disappointments, a follow-up to his debut novel, A Kiss from Maddalena. Here, Castellani picks up Maddalena Grasso's story in 1953, when she is seven years settled in Wilmington, Del., but "always crying, always looking backward." She left her beloved Italian village for America, imagining that she and her new husband, Antonio, would live the American dream, but Antonio's ambition of owning a restaurant remains just out of reach, and beautiful Maddalena, once an aspiring actress and model, now sews piecework, pining for the family she left behind. Maddalena befriends Guilio, a lonely, middle-aged accordion player mired in grief since the death of his elderly parents, and they eventually help each other find the courage to move past their own regrets. (She finds hope in a long-awaited pregnancy, though she will face a difficult labor.) By structuring much of the novel in flashback—albeit to reflect Maddalena's mentality—Castellani slows the story's momentum, but the natural, easy beauty of his prose captures the Italian-American immigrant community of a bygone era.
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Adult/High School–It is 1953, and Maddalena Grasso, newly arrived in the United States from Italy, is trying to make sense of the language, the customs, and her place in her new, extended family. Her perpetually dissatisfied husband, Antonio, yearns for the American Dream: shiny new car, new home, and children. Having convinced the beautiful Maddalena to marry him and leave her family behind, he now watches over her jealously. He feels a mixture of contempt and envy for his brother, who seems perfectly happy with his average wife, nondescript daughters, and job managing a restaurant. While Maddalena tries to keep Antonio grounded in the simpler joys of the life they share, an adventurous and single childhood friend lures him with promises of easy riches. Maddalena befriends a middle-aged single man who has recently lost both parents. Giulio Fabbri is drifting through life, but as his friendship with the Grassos deepens, he comes to understand himself and his dreams better. Threading through the various relationships are undercurrents of racial tension. When an African-American family moves into their predominantly Italian neighborhood, the community reacts with ugliness. Maddalena, Antonio, and Giulio interact with Abraham Waters in markedly different ways, and these differences are telling in how each individual handles life's disappointments and surprises. Castellani's lyrical and elegant novel goes beyond the story of a mid-20th-century Italian-American community. His characters are finely drawn, and he has a keen eye for the subtle dramas of family and friendship.–Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA
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It's been difficult for Maddelena to adjust to living in the U.S. There are no donkeys, nor are there any olive trees. Most of all, she misses her family back in the tiny mountain village of central Italy where she grew up. And ever since 1946, when her new husband, Antonio Grasso, brought her to live with his family in Delaware, Maddelena has come to realize that life in postwar America is complicated. When she tells Antonio that she is finally pregnant, he reacts poorly. Why? Because Antonio has begun to dream of owning his own restaurant. A larger family changes things. The Waters family also has a dream, that of owning a nice house in a good community. But being black, their dream is not shared by most Italians in the neighborhood. However, not all dreams are lost in this fine novel that lovingly evokes a time in America's past that many people think of as idyllic but is revealed by the author to be filled with complexity, failure, misunderstanding, and some hard-earned success--not unlike our own. Jerry Eberle
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A natural storyteller, warm-hearted and instinctual, Christopher Castellani has fashioned an engaging plot with writing that is dead-on and characters who reward you with their genuine humanity. Julia Alvarez. author of In the Time of Butterflies

It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. Maddalena Grasso has lost her country, her family, and the man she loved by coming to America; her mercurial husband, Antonio, has lost his opportunity to realize the American Dream; their new friend, Guilio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, has lost his beloved parents. In the shadow of St. Anthonys Church, named for the patron saint of lost things, the prayers of these troubled but determined people are heard, and fate and circumstances conspire to answer them in unforeseeable ways. With great authenticity and immediacy, The Saint of Lost Things evokes a bittersweet time in which the world seemed more intimate and knowable, and the American Dream simpler, nobler, and within reach.

It is 1953 in the tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. In the shadow of St. Anthony's Church, named for the patron staint of lost things, lives the Grasso family. Young Maddalena, a seamstress pregnant with her first child, misses the rolling hills and olive groves of the small Italian town where she was born and longs for her sisters and her mother and fatherall so distant, so far away from America. Maddalena's mercurial husband, Antonio, feels lucky to be in the land of opportunity and dreams only of opening his own restaurant, until he becomes unwittingly embroiled in his friends' vengeful plot against a neighbor. Down the street from the Grassos lives Giulio Fabbri, a shy accordion player, still single at forty, who's lost his beloved parents and has dreams of his own: to leave the shelter of his childhod home and reinvent himself. When Maddalena falls dangerously ill and Antonio's and Giulio's faith is challenged, the prayers of these troubled but steadfast people are heard, and fate and circumstances conspire to answer them in unforeseeable ways. With great affection and a profound understanding of human frailty and perseverance, Christopher Castellani brings to life a bittersweet time when the world seemed more intimate and knowable, and the American Dream simpler, nobler, and within reach.

Christopher Castellani is the author of A Kiss from Maddalena, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Best Work of Fiction and was a Book Sense Top Ten pick in hardcover and in paperback, a national selection of the Readers Club of America, a Barnes Noble Online Book Club pick, and a Borders Original Voices selection. A graduate of Swarthmore College with an M.F.A. from Boston University, he is the head instructor at Grub Street, a nonprofit creative writing center. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.