Christopher Castellani Books

Portofino, Italy. July 1953 At a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote, literary sensation Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet the enigmatic Anja Blomgren, an aspiring Swedish actress. Their encounter will alter the course of their lives forever. Spanning half a century and featuring a dazzling cast of characters - from Anna Magnani cooking pasta amatriciana in a sun-kissed kitchen in Rome, to Ludovico Visconti barking orders on his latest film set - Leading Men is a heart-breaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness, and a moving re-telling of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century

It is 1943 and Santa Cecilia has become a village of women. All the young men are away at war, and for Vito Leone, time is short. A few months shy of the draft, he has begun to woo the beautiful Maddalena Piccinelli, the daughter of the town's most powerful family. No matter that her parents dismiss him as a mammoni, a mama's boy, or that her older sister has publicly called him a fool. But Maddalena sees the romantic side of Vito, his humour and his tenderness. As the war intensifies, so do her feelings towards her unlikely suitor. When the Italians unexpectedly surrender to the Allies, the retreating German soldiers invade Santa Cecilia, forcing everyone to flee, except Vito and his mother. While the village is being shelled and looted, Vito, with ingenuity and boundless devotion, comes up with the perfect plan to prove that he is a suitor worthy of Maddalena. When the Piccinellis finally return home to Santa Cecilia, they find some marvellous changes have taken place in both Vito and the village...

Erst als Antonio seine Frau zu verlieren droht, erkennt er, wie sehr er sie wirklich liebt. Als Maddalena 1946 ihr verarmtes Dorf in Italien verließ, um mit ihrem Mann Antonio in den USA ein neues, glückliches Leben zu beginnen, träumte auch sie den amerikanischen Traum von Wohlstand und Freiheit. Aber die Wirklichkeit sieht anders aus: Das Geld ist knapp, und Antonios einstige Liebe zu ihr scheint verschwunden. Selbst das Kind, das sie erwartet, lehnt er ab. Doch dann erkrankt Maddalena so schwer, dass ihr Leben in Gefahr gerät, und mit einem Mal erkennt Antonio, welch tiefe Zuneigung er noch immer für seine Frau empfindet. Inbrünstig betet er zum Heiligen der verlorenen Dinge, Maddalena ihr Leben – und ihre Liebe – zurückzugeben ...