The Library’s Literary Society Event Featured New York Times best-selling
author
Adriana Trigiani
ADRIANA TRIGIANI is beloved by millions of readers around the world for her hilarious and heartwarming novels. Her newest book, VERY VALENTINE, waslaunched in February and she appeared at Main Library on February 13, 2009, for an evening of fun, music, entertainment, dinner and more.
Adriana Trigiani’s appearance was underwritten in part by Gold Sponsors: the Frank & Pearl Gelbman Charitable Trust - Huntington Bank Trust and Denise DeBartolo York, and Bronze Sponsors: C.J. and Lyn Julias, Judge Maryand Steve DeGenaro, and Janis Interiors Special thanks to: Lou Fuscilla Caterer, Roncone Studio - Terri Roncone, MultiMedia Farms, Jim and Susan and Kelly Meehan, Carol and Dominic Vechiarelli, Beth Vechiarelli Cooper, Janis and Paris Kriech, Barnes and Noble-Amy Neral, and to all the ladies who baked cookies for our cookie table.
Bands: Betty Bannon Accordion Duo and Gerri D'Amico Band.
Committee: Carol McBride, Beth Vechiarelli Cooper, Carol Vechiarelli, Janis Kriech.
Enjoy these glimpses of the event. Photos by Roncone Studio.
Adriana was raised in a small coal-mining town in southwest Virginia in a big Italian family. She chose her hometown for the setting and title of her debut novel, the critically acclaimed and best-selling BIG STONE GAP, followed by the sequels BIG CHERRY HOLLER and MILK GLASS MOON. Since 2000, Adriana has delivered a novel a year to her fans. LUCIA, LUCIA, THE QUEEN OF THE BIG TIME and ROCOCO were instant “New York Times” best-sellers. Fall of 2006 brought HOME TO BIG STONE GAP, an instant best-seller and the fourth in her “Big Stone Gap” series.
Adriana also teamed up with her family for COOKING WITH MY SISTERS, which was co-authored by her sister Mary. The cookbook-memoir is filled with contributions from the Trigiani sisters and mother, featuring recipes and stories dating back 100 years from both sides of their Italian-American family.
She is internationally popular, with titles translated and published in more than 30 foreign countries. Critics from the “Washington Post” to the “New York Times” to People magazine have described Adriana’s novels as “tiramisu for the soul,” “sophisticated and wise,” and “dazzling.”
Her Lifetime television special, GROWING UP FUNNY, garnered an Emmy nomination for Lily Tomlin. In 1996, she wrote and directed the documentary film QUEENS OF THE BIG TIME. It won the Audience Award at the Hampton’s’ Film Festival and toured the international film festival circuit from Hong Kong to London. QUEENS OF THE BIG TIME is now in a distribution deal with New Video, set for release in 2009.
Adriana’s work will soon be on the big screen, as preparations are underway to produce her BIG STONE GAP screenplay.
RELEASED FEBRUARY 2009:
Very Valentine - Trigiani’s new novel, the first in a trilogy, is about an Italian-American family of shoemakers in Greenwich Village. The book, full of laughs and a few tears (mandatory!), follows the matriarch shoemaker’s granddaughter, Valentine Roncalli, and her career challenges, alluring love life and family conflicts.
Big Stone Gap - It’s 1978 and 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan is the self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, Va., a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the local pharmacist, she’s been keeping the townsfolk’s secrets for years, but she’s about to discover a skeleton in her own family’s tidy closet that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life. Soon she finds herself juggling two marriage proposals, conducting a no-holds-barred family feud, directing the prestigious Outdoor Drama and keeping the town’s dysfunctional Rescue Squad on its toes.
Big Cherry Holler - This extraordinary sequel to “Big Stone Gap” takes us back to the enchanting mountain life of Trigiani’s best-selling debut novel. With her newfound belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria makes a life for herself and her growing family, hoping her fearless leap into commitment will make happiness stay. What she didn’t count on was that fate, life and the ghosts of the past would come to haunt her and, eventually, test the love she has for her husband. The mountain walls that have protected her all her life cannot spare Ave Maria the life lessons she must learn.
Milk Glass Moon - The third book in Trigiani’s best-selling “Big Stone Gap” series continues the life story of Ave Maria with twists as plentiful as those found on the holler roads of southwest Virginia. Transporting us from Ave Maria’s home in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Italian Alps, from New York City to the Tuscan countryside, it is a story of a shifting mother-daughter relationship, a daughter’s first love and a mother’s heartbreak, a marriage and its challenges, and a community faced with seismic change.
Home to Big Stone Gap - In Trigiani’s fourth novel of the “Big Stone Gap” series, Ave Maria has reached a turning point, with her daughter having flown the nest to enchanting Italy. When a friend’s postcard arrives with the message “It’s time to live your life for you,” Ave Maria realizes that it’s time to go in search of brand-new dreams. But before she can put her foot on the path, her life is turned upside down.
Lucia, Lucia - In the glittering, vibrant New York City of 1950, Lucia Sartori is the beautiful 25-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized and the Sartoris’ honor is tested.
The Queen of the Big Time - The industrious Castellucas farm land outside Roseto, Pa., a re-creation of the residents’ Italian hometown from which they immigrated. Nella, the family’s middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life “in town,” far from the rigors of farm life. But Nella’s dreams of making her own fortune shift when family needs her help. Still, her friendship with the poetic, worldly Renato Lanzara ignites into a fiery romance Nella is certain will lead to marriage. But Nella is not alone in her pursuit: every girl in town seems to want Renato. When he disappears without explanation, Nella is left with a shattered heart. Four years later, Renato’s sudden return to Roseto the night before Nella’s wedding to the steadfast Franco Zollerano leaves her and her family shaken.
Rococo - Bartolomeo di Crespi is the acclaimed interior decorator of the Italian-American town Our Lady of Fatima, N.J.. To date, Bartolomeo has hand-selected every chandelier, sconce and ottoman around, so when the renovation of the local church is scheduled, he assumes there is only one man for the job. Plaster of Paris, polished marble and unbridled testosterone arrive in buckets when Bartolomeo recruits Rufus McSherry, a strapping, handsome artist, and Pedro Allercon, a stained-glass artisan, to work with him. Together, the three will do more than blow the dust off the old Fatima frescoes – they will turn the town upside down, challenge the faithful and restore hope where there once was none.
Author Events Bring Great Books to Life!
The Library’s Literary Society was launched in 2005, the Library’s 125th anniversary year. The Literary Society is comprised of generous individuals who care deeply about the Library and would like to bring to our community special programs, including noted authors, to celebrate reading and literacy.
The Literary Society’s first author event, in October 2005, featured Mary Doria Russell, who discussed her Pulitzer Prize nominated historical novel, “A Thread of Grace,” and the journey of creating it. Each year, the Literary Society features noted authors such as: award-winning crime novelist Laura Lippman, Cleveland’s famous mystery author Les Roberts, and Scott London, internationally known journalist and photographer.
For more information on the Literary Society, contact the Development Director, at 330.744.8636, ext. 118.
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