This book is the best book I have read in a very long time and the best of Adriana Trigiani, as it is a human story, love story, family story, historical story, working-class story, an immigrants story, and it is rich with art, music, and fabulous writing.

I had discovered the joy of reading Adriana Trigiani with Rococo, the Stone Gap series, and later the Valentines, but this book surpasses them all, which makes me wonder if Trigiani can ever top this one. And if The Shoemaker’s Wife doesn’t win any major awards, I’ll be disappointed in the awarding committees.

The time scan of the story starts from early nineteen hundreds, reaches to World War I and continues all the way after World War II. The main characters Enza and Ciro are from the same area in the north of Italy on the Alps. After Ciro’s father dies in a mine in the USA, Ciro and his older brother Eduardo are left in a convent by their mother under the care of the nuns in Bergamo, Italy. The mother doesn’t come back for her children, which wounds the boys emotionally, especially Ciro.

Enza, on the other hand, is from a poor but happy family up on the mountain in Schilpario. Enza is the oldest child in the family who takes on an adult role much early in her life, and this helps her build a very strong, independent character. When Enza’s youngest sibling Stella dies, Ciro is sent to dig the toddler’s grave. This is where the two meet and the love story begins; however, the attraction between the two pauses before blossoming, since Ciro has discovered an unholy act by the priest. Instead of being sent to a correctional facility by the priest, Ciro is sent to America secretly by the nuns to become a shoemaker’s apprentice, as his brother Eduardo enters the seminary.

Enza’s family is in dire straits, too, for they lose their home, and Enza and her father Marco sail for America to work and save enough money to build their family the house they dream of. Marco goes west for the mines, and Enza works as a seamstress in a factory in Hoboken, near a family who uses her like a slave.

Yet, this is only the beginning. The lushness of the story becomes even richer after Enza and Ciro reach America and meet again, but from this point on, the novel will be better served if left to the reader's own discovery.

The writing style, diction, and the flow are wonderfully smooth and spectacular, and special care has been given to minute details in the backgrounds of the settings in each scene. The story is exceptionally moving but without condescending to sappiness or melodrama.

All characters, even the secondary ones, are unique, and they are meticulously drawn. Better yet, almost every character is a strong person who determines the course of his or her own life, in spite of the extreme cultural and social changes in those times.

In my personal opinion, this novel is a work of art, fictionalized from true life stories, and it ranks up there with the likes of The Grapes of Wrath and Dr. Zhivago.

Everything.

awed.

is Adriana Trigiani.

it is a powerful story and an exceptional one that covers several genres without becoming genre-specific.

First published in 2012, this novel comes in hardcover, softcover, in 15 audio-CDs, and as an E-Book.

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Created Dec 16, 2013 at 4:52pm • Submit your own review...