The goddess in love with a horse (and what happened next)

Product Description The Goddess in Love with a Horse (And What Happened Next) is about two entangled families one from the island of Sicily and the other from Calabria (the toe of the Italian boot) who immigrate to Boston where they marry and infuse their startling heritage into the New England culture. It begins like this - The first time Ava saw Angelo naked was on their wedding night (11 May 1860) when he strode into their bed¬room, accidentally revealing to her startled eyes that from the waist down he had the hindquarters of a stallion. So you know this is no ordinary novel. As prize-winning author Nicholas Delbanco says, "This book is a delight from first to final page. The Goddess in Love with a Horse marries the long reach of history to the present moment, the real to the surreal, the romantic to the workaday world--and does so with great grace throughout. Eugene Mirabelli crosses the Atlantic by sea and air and on a magic carpet woven out of language; his wit and passionate brio can transport us all. " Or, in the words of author and critic Albert DiBartolomeo "This is a book whose pages, glowing with sensuality, warmth, and a palpable sweetness, provide one delight after another. The Goddess in Love with a Horse is a joy to read. Review Magic is the word that comes to mind when I think of the novels of Eugene Mirabelli. In many of his earlier novels, he does follow the social realism that we associate with the conventional social novel. But in The Goddess in Love with a Horse, he has returned to the fertile ground he cultivated in The World at Noon. In The Goddess he does not just go back to the same subject matter; rather, he takes flight in an altogether more imaginative version of the genealogical descent of the Cavallù/di Mare family. Mirabelli does not merely use myth in the conventional manner, as background to his narrative. Rather, he is a mythmaker. --from Kenneth Scambray's review in L'Italo-AmericanoThere are echoes of fable in The Goddess in Love with a Horse; reverberations of every romantic classic that ever gripped your heart. A slender volume that still manages to inspire epic thoughts. Sensuous. Delicious. A delight --from Linda Richards review in January Magazine About the Author Eugene Mirabelli is the author of six novels, plus short stories, poems, many journalistic pieces and numerous book reviews. He admits to being at least 77 and with any luck he'll be older by the time you read this. Mirabelli taught in the graduate writing program at the State University of New York at Albany during its heyday, and currently contributes articles and reviews to an alternative newsweekly with a focus on arts and politics. This makes him the oldest writer on a journal run by young hotheads. He has received grants for his work, including a Rockefeller Grant, has been nominated for a couple of Pushcart Prizes and a Nebula Award, and his fiction has been published in Czech, Hebrew, Russian, Sicilian, and Turkish. His years as a teacher have given him an abiding interest in education. Mirabelli is one of the founders and a former director of Alternative Literary Programs in the Schools (ALPS), and he served as its treasurer for over twenty years. ALPS, a non-profit corporation, was established to bring poets and writers to the schools of New York State to give creative writing workshops. His previous novels include,The Burning Air, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1959 - which, he admits, was a long time ago. This was followed by The Way In, (Viking), No Resting Place, (Viking), The World at Noon, (Guernica Editions of Canada), and a novella, The Language Nobody Speaks, and another novel The Passion of Terri Heart, both published by Spring Harbor Press.