Between the Cracks: one woman's journey from Sicily to America By Carmela Cattuti Book Spotlight and Interview with Author!

Between the Cracks: one woman's journey from Sicily to America

By Carmela Cattuti

Genre: Historical Fiction

Join Angela Lanza as she experiences the tumultuous world of early 20th century Sicily and New York. Orphaned by the earthquake and powerful eruption of Mt. Etna in 1908, Angela is raised in the strict confines of an Italian convent. Through various twists of fate, she is married to a young Italian man whom she barely knows, then together with her spouse, immigrates to the U.S.

About the Author

Carmela Cattuti started her writing career as a writer for the Somerville News in Boston, MA. She is a writer, painter, and yoga instructor in Boston. After she finished her graduate work in English Literature at Boston College, she began to writer creatively. As fate would have it, She felt compelled to writer her great aunt’s story. Between the Cracks and The Ascent have gone through many incarnations and will become a trilogy. The Ascent is the second novel.

Get in touch

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/carmelacattuticreative

On Twitter: www.twitter.com/ccattuti 

On B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/carmela+cattuti?_requestid=3832793

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Between-Cracks-Womans-Journey-America-ebook/dp/B00EIR08TO/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=carmela+cattuti&qid=1581981907&sr=8-2

On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18388553-between-the-cracks?from_search=true&qid=yTWIA2W8AV&rank=1

Excerpt:

A cross from Italy’s mainland sat the city of Messina like an indomitable fortress. Proud of its solid presence, Messina was the travelers’ first encounter with the island of Sicily. The earthy colors of the buildings and landscape signaled to the visitor or returning Sicilian that Messina and its people belonged to the island, not to any outside political force or cultural tradition. The clang of the donkey-drawn carts and the voices calling out to customers to buy wares in the market added to the music of the city’s sounds. Visitors marveled out loud at the cathedrals and ancient art work throughout the city, but the locals walked and spoke softly, especially near the narrow slits between the buildings. Visitors delighted in the snake-like movement of the streets. The streets seemed to lead directly to a famous church or street market but then would slowly veer off in a different direction. They seemed to be designed to intentionally confuse. The city offered no help in arriving at a specific destination. Ancient buildings were so close together that air barely squeezed through. Residents believed that between the buildings old mysteries sat, holding the true essence of Messina.  Whenever one of the townspeople walked close to the openings, there seemed to be a whisper, not a sound you could hear with your physical ears but heard in your mind. The whisper seemed to convey a yearning that had been imprisoned for hundreds of years. When this happened, people scurried past, heads down, attempting to get away from the whispers in their heads.

Angela ran down the hot cobblestone street and fell, scrambled to her feet and ran, then fell again. She threw herself on the street and screamed a long scream that echoed off the ruins of the ancient churches. A timeless scream that would always and forever be heard. Her city, Messina, was a massive graveyard. She searched for her family—her mother, sister and brother. She yelled their names into the air, into demolished houses. She screamed at bodies crushed or run through by fallen beams. Other bodies were caught between the open earth and the street. They were the souls in hell that she had seen in paintings, forever in agony, never at peace.

Interview with the author!

What do you find most challenging about the writing process, and how do you deal with it?

-What I find most challenging about the writing process is trusting my intuition in the first draft. I try not to stop and reread what I have written because the tendency is to rewrite. The best approach is for the writer to complete the first draft and then go back and edit. I find this extremely challenging.

When and where do you do your writing?

-I do much of my writing in hotel lobbies in Boston. They are a beautiful setting for the creative process. Many writers feel alone when writing at home. Writing in hotel lobbies is more relaxing and can spark new ideas. Think about it, hotel lobbies are under used spaces and if you don’t have an office, they are free spaces. I write during the day and market in the evening. 

What have you learned about promoting your books?

-I have learned that marketing is changing and most of it is done online. With my first novel I did bookstore author signings, now that is not happening. As writers we need to become computer savvy. 

What are you most proud of as a writer?

-I am most proud of my ability to express personality through dialogue. I grew up hearing a lot of accents and everyone talked a lot. I have developed a technique for expressing the vitality of speech. 

If you could have dinner with any writer, living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?

-I would most like to have dinner with Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein. We would talk about how, as a woman author in the early 19th century, she was able to write about molding a man out of dead bodies. This was a completely taboo subject and went against the church, but somehow she was able to do it.