“Every time Marc Zimmerman publishes a new book, I celebrate. He is a wonderful writer, and this time out, he doesn’t disappoint.” Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The House of Broken Angels. A compelling story, fascinating characters, clear, unimpeded writing, first-rate dialogue, and provocative insights. ... Marlena belongs in the pantheon of truly unforgettable harridans, … a force of nature in the summer of her life. Dick Goldberg, author of Family Business. Zimmerman’s most readable and memorable work of “memoir fiction"... by a writer of talent, integrity, and courage--the book should be made available to as many readers as possible. Antonio Zavala, author of Pale Yellow Moon. "To misquote Tolstoy, “Every unhappy marriage is unhappy in its own way.” So it goes in Marc Zimmerman’s new book about a Jewish American professor protagonist, Mel, and the passionate, beautiful, charismatic, and willful Marlena Rienzi. Who is Marlena? Like and unlike Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Constance Chatterley, or Nicole Diver in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic novel—as well as other women who struggle against the bonds of marriage. An Italian-American woman of the 1950s who rejects the stereotyped roles others have wished her to play, who lives out her drive to attract and seduce many of those who come to know her, who is relentless in fulfilling her desires, and who, in the 1960s, comes to see the marriage she has sought as a cage out of which she must break. A bi-sexual but mainly lesbian woman demanding freedom and self-fulfillment no matter what, and a man whose passions lead him into a downward spiral that threatens his life and identity unless he can find the strength to escape. "Is the book a novel, a memoir or some hybrid genre? Clearly a Jewish-American narrative, it deals with Italian, Latino and African and other Americans, as the star-crossed lovers travel from California and Oregon to New York and back—to Spain, France, Italy as well as other locales in the U.S., Europe and Mexico. What emerges is a gripping narrative combining experience and imagination—a story of two who should probably have never been, a story evoking the compulsion and heartbreak of relationships many of us have come to know." Guillermo Simbolov, Guatemalan critic and writer.