Two young brothers are exploring the caves near their Tuscan hill town when one is kidnapped by migrants on their way home to their own village in the upper Apennines. Set in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, this novella explores the life of one small community as it grapples with powerful forces beyond its control or understanding.
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By Joan Dinkelspiel
Feb 27, 2009
"Salema" Lea Calegaris Park’s book is magnificent. With Salema I immediately relax into the world Lea created. I am transported to Italy, and not distracted by the mechanics of her storytelling. It is absorbing. As for its pace, what keeps coming to mind is andante; like with music, andante, leisurely walking. The life of the story now lives inside me. I was really taken with it. It is lushly described. You may find as I do that you will want to go there again and again.
"Salema by Lea Calegaris Park" This book is a little time-machine. For the few hours one is reading it, one is in the time and place the book describes, a Tuscan village in early 20th century Italy. At the beginning of the book something disturbing happens, a small boy disappears. In fact he has been taken by migrants going home to another village. The story unfolds the the consequences of this as they occur, for the boy's parents, people in their village, in fact almost everyone touched by what has happened. This kidnapping is not a 'big' event in the world-historical sense. Not a war or political assassination. But it is of deep importance to those whose lives are changed by it. One of those things that happen in life where the effects on those involved are profound and irreversible. By the end of the book the reader has the feeling of having lived in that village, at that time, when all these things happened, experiencing them oneself. Then you close the book, the... More > time-machine spits you back out, and there you are, in your chair, feeling something like jet-lag from the jolt of returning to the present.< Less
