FINDING AMERICA: 

A Pilgrimage to Rediscover a Nation

THE MISSION: To reconnect with America's unique heritage through its most enduring landmarks. Come along with me while I travel to 15 of America's most recognizable places like the Grand Canyon, Graceland and Walden Pond. I want to delve into the spirit of America by connecting to something larger than myself through the places that tie us together as Americans and find out more about myself in the process. So what do these places have to teach us? I'm on a mission to visit these landmarks and find out.

NEXT STOP: Ellis Island

 SHORT STORIES

 Brooklyn Protocol  - Published in The Macguffin, Winter/Spring 2005

 Labor Day, 1935 - Published in Pangolin Papers, Spring 2005

A SAMPLING OF PERIODICALS

 Hemingway's Gatsby  - To be published this winter in Ducts.org

Morris-Jumel Mansion - Published in Preservation Magazine, November 2008

Brooklyn Waterfront  - Published in Preservation Magazine, September 2007

Coney Island: America's Forgotten Playground  - Published in History Magazine, March 2006

Do you know when you became an adult? Was it when you moved away from home? Got married? Had a baby? Rose had done all of those things and still isn’t sure. Leaving the security of home is a difficult transition under any circumstances. Add a baby, a war and an overbearing mother and it's downright petrifying. Rose Silvestri had planned to live a quiet life without stepping foot out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Then Pearl Harbor burned. Before long twenty-two-year-old Rose found herself moving to San Francisco to be near her husband serving with the Pacific fleet, and she questioned everything she thought she knew about what her life was supposed to become.

We Happy Few is my first novel. It is the tale of Rose's cross-country trip on a streamliner train with her eight-month-old son. Rose tries to use this time to put her mother's affair behind her, an act which she smugly believes is never forgivable. Then an avalanche of snow buries the train on a Wyoming mountain pass and Rose is tempted by feelings for an army sergeant. World War II has irrevocably affected all of the characters - in their daily activities and views of the world and themselves. Rose no longer sees things as black and white, Allies vs. Nazis, right or wrong, but a whole series of grays.  

We Happy Few has a twist - a journey narrative on the home front. The result is not only an interesting parallel with contemporary events, but a story, to which we can all relate, of finding one's true purpose in life.

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