Between Two Rivers - Hardcover

Nicholas Rinaldi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593051963 ISBN 13: 9780593051962

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2004

Synopsis

"Farro Fescu knows them all, knows all their secrets. He knows what happened to Yesenia Rivera, the nineteen-year-old staff housekeeper from Queens, when she took a fateful ride one evening on the Staten Island Ferry. He alone knows the truth behind the mysterious mishap that befell the fashion designer Ira Klempp, a resident of the twelfth floor. And he knows - and would like to know much more - about the alluring Maria Gracia Mono, sometime lover of Harry Falcon, the brilliant captain of industry who lives in the penthouse and is dying of cancer." "He is keenly attuned to the building and the people in it, yet he does not know what is in his own heart - why, after a long, hard life, he is still alive, and still alone. Nor does he know what he will be capable of in the face of sudden, overwhelming tragedy."--BOOK JACKET.

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas Rinaldi teaches at Fairfield University, in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife, Jackie. His work includes two novels, Bridge Fall Down and The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and three collections of poetry: The Resurrection of the Snails, The Luftwaffe in Chaos and We Have Lost Our Fathers.

From Publishers Weekly

Intertwining stories by the author of The Jukebox Queen of Malta offer subtle portraits of the residents of Echo Terrace, a fictitious Battery Park building in which the condominiums are named after the likes of Mae West, Susan B. Anthony and Grandma Moses. At the book's center is the inimitable Romanian concierge, Farro Fescu, who watches with keen eyes the comings and goings of the intriguing inhabitants, including Karl Vogel, a Luftwaffe pilot engaged in an affair with a journalist whose grandfather was killed by a Nazi fighter pilot ("She is making peace with the enemy," Karl thinks); Yesenia, a captivating 19-year-old housemaid who is brutally raped on the way home to her Queens apartment; and Theo, a plastic surgeon who falls for a widow whose husband admitted to an affair and shortly thereafter died of a heart attack. Devastated, the woman, Nora, poisons her exotic pets ("Whatever I love, I make it die") and then walks into traffic. With Nora in a coma, her young actress niece, Angela, moves into her apartment and enters into an unlikely affair with a poem-quoting undertaker who is convinced that love can conquer all. Among a few bizarre twists, a young designer falls (or is pushed) from a window, and Theo is drafted by the FBI to perform a sex-change operation on one of Augusto Pinochet's collaborators. These are complex, moving stories without straightforward resolutions-as one character remarks, "Life is heavy, it weighs"-and if they feel a bit overwritten sometimes, Rinaldi compensates for this with multifaceted and memorable characters.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593051963
• ISBN 13: 9780593051962
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432