book cover of Lives of the Saints
Added by 3 members
 

Lives of the Saints

(1990)
(The Book of Saints)
(The first book in the Lives of the Saints series)
A novel by

 
 
Awards
Betty Trask Award Best First Novel (nominee)
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction

Set in a small, golden village nestled in folds of the Italian Apennines, The Book of Saints is a deceptively simple novel of startling power and mythic dimension. Young Vittorio Innocente is the pampered son of Cristina, a women whose husband has left Italy for work in North America. Beneath her placid surface, Cristina yearns to escape the restrictive village; and, one day, Vittorio is startled to find her in the family's stable, her ankle swelling from a snakebite. But what really happened to Cristina that day becomes the center of this tale - a story of passion and superstition beneath pastoral calm, a mother's secret life witnessed by a child. The first novel in a trilogy that follows Vittorio to adulthood, The Book of Saints is Ricci's acclaimed debut.



Genre: Literary Fiction

Visitors also looked at these books


Used availability for Nino Ricci's Lives of the Saints


About Fantastic Fiction       Information for Authors