Only Sons

Fiction. ONLY SONS begins at an Italian-American wedding in the 1960s and reaches into the new millennium through the story of two families, the Salvaggis and Maresciallos, living near each other in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. Sonny Salvaggi, child of a strong, unwed mother, moves from careful, prudent marriage to philandering in his forties, to being a Quixotic, aesthetic older man hopelessly in love with Margo, a woman less than half his age whose intelligence, strength, and beauty move him in surprising, poetic ways. Jack Maresciallo, Margo's lover and father to her son, Marcello, is a talented, but unlucky artist who, after a bad period of drink and drugs in Paris and New York, straightens out and works for Sonny as director of a health and fitness club. Finally, Marcello, after a difficult youth, grows up a scholar of Italian-Americana who seeks to record and understand the story of the two families--a story that includes the immigration of Carmine, founder of the Maresciallos, enmity between Sonny and Anthony (Carmine's son, Jack's father), and a snow storm and explosion that levels a mountain and a quarry, the source of the two families' success.

Fred Misurella tells the complex, and sometimes secret truth about what it is to be alive in these complicated times.... Misurella writes in the clearest, precise prose, an has as his special strength the joining of shining intelligence with deep emotion.--Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong