GAIL REITANO grew up in the southern New Jersey Pine Barrens. After graduating from Rutgers University, she lived in New York and London before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Her fiction, memoir and personal essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Catamaran Literary Reader, LitHub, Ovunque Siamo, Writing Women (UK), and several anthologies.
Her first novel, Italian Love Cake, Bordighera Press (2021) won an Independent Press award; a French translation, Liberata, was published by Editions Anne Carriere (2022), and Pocket, Univers Poche (2023).
ITALIAN LOVE CAKE, A NOVEL
In a small rural town in southern New Jersey, Marie Genovese looks out from her apartment window above the Five & Ten and wonders how she’ll save the failing store she’s
inherited from her mother. In a historical moment overshadowed by fear, economic uncertainty, and the controlling behavior of men, a powerful line of women—living and dead—helps Marie navigate her path to independence.
With the realist detail of Sinclair Lewis and the modern, feminist sensibility of Elena Ferrante, Italian Love Cake is the account of a woman thwarted in her self-expression and autonomy.
What readers are saying
"One of the best novels I have read in a year or two. I was riveted to every single word. I adore the character of Marie, the store, and Ada, and the era. A first novel— hard to believe because it is so
accomplished. The language, the characterization, the plot, the setting. I was only sorry to finish it and tried to drag out the last few pages. Brava!"
—Joan Steinau Lester
Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White
In this Depression-era portrait of a first-generation Italian-American woman, Marie Genovese asserts her own mind, and her sexuality, on the way to achieving her economic dreams.
Italian Love Cake, Bordighera Press, May 2021.
Sparks fly from the first page to the last in this
unconventional novel written with mastery and daring about relationships."
—Renate Stendhal
Kiss Me Again, Paris
An Anthology of sixteen Italian American authors ~ ~ ~
Am I an Italian or an American?
In Red Geraniums, and in much of the literature of the diaspora, these explorations can be boiled down to that single question.
But as this literature illustrates, to reclaim a heritage no longer actively present in one’s day to day life requires patience, inquiry, even forgiveness in the face of shame and imposter syndrome. The stories in Red Geraniums bring verve, raised voices, and no small amount of joy to this quest.
Available in Italian
