Frank Polizzi - Somewhere in the Stars

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MY GRATITUDE TO MY FIRST READER, my wife, for having faith in me during this four-year process. Thank you to Michael Mirolla, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Guernica Editions, for publishing this novel as part of the Essential Prose Series, works which deal with “the pleasurable understanding of different cultures.” My hope is that this novel will lead to better understanding of the Italian American experience during World War II and the survival of Italian Jews during the Holocaust. Martha Hughes, a novelist, was most helpful with advice on the first draft through an N.Y.U. program. Editor/novelist Maxine Swann read the entire work and provided many useful suggestions. My good friends, Richard Holz and Pete Smith, carefully read and critiqued the chapter on boating and military history, respectively. Thanks also to the members of MCCA for their support of all my literary endeavors.

FRANK POLIZZI was the editor of Feile-Festa, a multicultural, literary arts journal ( http://www.medcelt.org/feile-festa/). He worked as a Vista Volunteer in New London, CT, an English teacher on the original staff to reopen Townsend Harris HS at Queens College and the Head of Reference and Instructional Services at the Hormann Library of Wagner College. His poems and stories have appeared in The Archer, Bitterroot, Electric Acorn (Dublin Writers), Mudfish, Paterson Literary Review, Wired Art and others. The Guild of Italian Actors (GIAA) accepted his one-act play, By the Light of a Barber Pole for its reading series in 2009. Two years later, Finishing Line Press published All Around Town, his poems exploring Sicilian American roots and experiences in NYC. Several chapters/stories were published from his novel, A Pity Beyond All Telling, and one of them was shortlisted for the Fish Prize in Ireland. In 2015 Bordighera Press published A New Life with Bianca, a story of a young man’s love for Bianca, told through a series of sonnets in English, Italian and Sicilian. His new novel, Somewhere in the Stars, made the 2014 Long list of the UK publisher, Lightship, for its “First Novel Prize” and was accepted for publication by Guernica Editions in early 2016. Frank died on August 23, 2016.

Copyright © 2017, Margaret Colvin and Guernica Editions Inc.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

Michael Mirolla, editor

Interior layout: Jill Ronsley, Sun Editing & Book Design

Cover design: Allen Jomoc Jr.

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First edition.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2017938078

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Polizzi, Frank, author

Somewhere in the stars / Frank Polizzi. -- 1st edition.

(Essential prose series ; 141)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77183-233-5 (softcover).--

ISBN 978-1-77183-234-2 (EPUB).--

ISBN 978-1-77183-235-9 (Kindle)

I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 141

PS3616.O42S66 2017

813’.6

C2017-902333-0

C2017-902334-9