Touch weaves love and tragedy, birth and death, into two people's journeys through Staten Island's Little Italy. Rosa DeAngelo marries at 18, leaving behind her secret admirer, Tony Prezzi. He marries his own pursuer, a NYC cop. Tragedies later, they each bury themselves in their jobs, drug-store clerk and auto mechanic, and achieve career success. The new touch therapy at Le Salon de l'Amour brings feeling back to the physically abused and Rosa trains to be a therapist. After a second tragedy, Rosa gives a high-school graduation speech that goes viral on YouTube and creates a grassroots movement of abuse survivors. Tony tries for Rosa again. Rosa rejects him again. Rosa's old-country Mama sets up an arranged marriage between the two. That move backfires and Tony finally finds another woman to love, a non-Italian. Tony's happy ending is not happy for anybody else in the two families, so....Brightly painted characters fill the book. Rosa and Joey, Tony and Lucia, and their lesbian friends with the straight-ahead lives, Jojo and Lee. Rosa's super-fertile sister, Aggie. Rosa's "nutso" Mama, and Tony's solemn Mama with her terrible secret. Karl and Birgit, Danish touch therapists, and Dr. Eleni, the Greek psychiatrist. The heroic burn survivor, Lou Bates. Sister Mary and her shelter for abused women. The New Yorker writer, Tatyana Koslova. Paola and Tessa, the crusading mother-daughter team. Rosa and Tony have many supporters, offering sometimes wise but always contradictory advice.
- | Author: Casey Costra
- | Publisher: Forward Press
- | Publication Date: Nov 13, 2016
- | Number of Pages: 264 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback
- | ISBN-10: 0998285307
- | ISBN-13: 9780998285306
