Joseph Bathanti
Author
Language
English
Description
Joseph Bathanti's “The Act of Contrition & Other Stories”, a series of linked stories and one novella, continues the adventures of Fritz Sweeney and his outrageously memorable parents, Travis and Rita, that began in Bathanti's earlier award-winning volume of stories, “The High Heart”. Spanning the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, in an Italian American working class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, “The Act of Contrition” celebrates and complicates...
Author
Language
English
Description
In a weaving together of contradictory realms-past and present, rustbelt city and rural/urban South, old-world Catholicism and backwoods Protestantism-Joseph Bathanti draws readers into the 1970s as protagonist George Dolce faces major upheaval in The Life of the World to Come. George aspires to leave his blue collar, Catholic neighborhood of East Liberty in Pittsburgh. He is on the cusp of graduation from college and headed for law school when he...
Author
Language
English
Description
East Liberty is a poetic, passionate coming-of-age novel spanning 1955 to 1963, set in an Italian-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Roberto (Bobby) Renzo, the novel's fatherless narrator and main character, lives with Francene Renzo, his beautiful, mysterious, and unconventional mother who gave birth to him out of wedlock. Together the two habitually watch vintage Hollywood movies on TV. Orbiting Bobby and Francene are the Catholic Church; Francene's...