For Jennie
By Donna L. Gestri
Port Town Publishing
Cover Art by Grace Papagno
July 2006
ISBN: 1-59466-089-1
300 pages
July 1957
Jennie DiLuca of Bensonhurst, New York explores Europe through a church sponsored cruise. She's single, lives with her sister's family and is a hard worker at a girdle factory. She's accepted that she's not going to have a family of her own, but that didn't mean she couldn't find someone to love. Someone who made her feel alive.
Aboard the Queen Mary, her friends warn her about playboys and a certain charming man who wants more than a single dance. Robert and Jennie become lovers even though they are clearly from different social circles. She's from the working class and he's from the wealthy and well educated. But their romance doesn't end when the cruise is over. Robert, having lost his first wife, is desperately in need in finding another woman to love. He believes he has found that special someone in Jennie. She's so alive and he just wants to please her. But can he remove the invisible barrier that separates their so very different societies.
In FOR JENNIE you can picture this middle-age woman living in an Italian neighborhood among the fruit and vegetable markets and neighbors who knew about everyone's lives. You can sense what it must have been like for her to not be able to afford a home of her own, but not caring because she is very close with her sister's children. You also experience a sense of not belonging when she is invited into Robert's life. So this book is about knowing where you belong and who you belong with. And that's okay, because that's what makes you happy.
Five fashion magazines out of five
©Denise Fleischer, gottawritenetwork.com
January 5, 2007
