Which Way to Nonna's House?: Second Movement of the New York Novella Quartet of the Four Seasons - Hardcover

by Joseph Nicolello (Author)

On a visit to his beloved Nonna's apartment in the Bronx Little Italy, Giuseppe sneaks out to explore the ongoing festival and all its sights and sounds. Giuseppe's father has an important job interview during the day which shall set the course of the future for the family, who is navigating the threshold of bankruptcy. It is Giuseppe's intention to return quickly, before Nonna awakens from her nap; but the boy quickly realizes he does not know the vicinity as well as he had thought. This takes him on a journey throughout Little Italy, guided by a wide cast of characters into various restaurants, shops, and eventually a church. Here he meets Father Moritz, SJ, who guides him home to safe passage. Meanwhile across the street, at Rodham University, academic politics reign, thus setting up a dichotomy of innocence and wonder beside pathology and ideology. Following up on the success of A Child's Christmas in Williamsburg, Which Way to Nonna's House? is a snapshot of Italian-American life, faith, and culture in the Bronx Little Italy which confronts the blights and evils of our time in order to have the wisdom of life in the spirit prevail.

Author Biography

University of Pennsylvania Schoenberg Fellow Joseph Nicolello is a scholar, poet, and author of several books, including Until the Sun Breaks Down: A Künstlerroman (three volumes, 2021), as well as a platonic dialogue concerning Thomism and medieval philosophy in the literary theory of Flannery O'Connor (Angelico Press, 2021). Nicolello is Schoenberg Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been Karmiole Fellow at UCLA, both tenures for research into various elements of early modern English literature, religious history, poetics, and mysticism.