Sometimes It Snows in America (Essential Prose Series)

Born into Somali royalty and Saudi Arabian wealth, Fatma is given away in infancy and, at age 12, forced into an arranged marriage with a young Peace Corps worker. Prejudice and cultural demands lead to a number of painful promises that will dictate the course of her life on two continents. Sometimes It Snows in America is a novel loosely based on the true account of an African woman’s descent into an American hell, and finds its echo in the descent of her native Somalia into its own hell of violent desperation. It leaves the reader with the gifts of unsuspected connection and surprising hope.

Marisa Labozzetta is the author of the novel, Stay With Me, Lella (Guernica 1999), and a collection of linked stories, Thieves Never Steal in the Rain, an Eric Hoffer ebook Award Winner. She was a finalist for the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for her collection of short stories, At the Copa (Guernica 2006). Her work has appeared in The American Voice, Beliefnet.com, The Florida Review, The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, Show Me a Hero: Great Contemporary Stories About Sports, and the bestselling When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, among other publications. Sometimes It Snows In America is an Eric Hoffer Award Finalist. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.