SWIMMING IN THE MOON.

SWIMMING IN THE MOON by PAMELA SCHOENEWALDT.

SOURCE: Received for review from Turnaround (Publisher Services).

Italy, 1905. Fourteen-year-old Lucia and her young mother, Teresa, are servants in a magnificent villa on the Bay of Naples, where Teresa soothes their unhappy mistress with song. But volatile tempers force them to flee, exchanging their warm, gilded cage for the cold winds off Lake Erie and Cleveland's restless immigrant quarters.

With a voice as soaring and varied as her moods, Teresa transforms herself into the Naples Nightingale on the vaudeville circuit. Clever and hardworking, Lucia blossoms in school until her mother's demons return, fracturing Lucia's dreams.

Yet Lucia is not alone in her struggle for a better life. All around her, friends and neighbors, new Americans, are demanding decent wages and working conditions. Lucia joins their battle, confronting risks and opportunities that will transform her and her world in ways she never imagined.

..... Outer back cover.

FIRST SENTENCE (Chapter 1: Singing To Vesuvius): I spend hours in trains now or shivering in borrowed Model T's, bouncing down rutted roads between towns strewn like rocks across frozen fields.

MEMORABLE MOMENT (Page 190): I wasn't exactly their image of a typical immigrant, I gathered from talks with suffragettes. I had finished high school and spoke good English now. Soon I could even be a citizen, But still I wasn't like these ladies; I could be useful for their marches but not precisely welcomed in their parlors.

MY THOUGHTS: An amazing novel. Storytelling at its best. 

Whilst the themes of immigration, mental health and the rise of trade unions are hardly unique it is the fact that they are combined in one book with such an extensive cast of female characters around whom the story revolves that makes Swimming In The Moon such a different and irresistible read.

It's the early twentieth century and teenager Lucia and her mother (Teresa), branded as a hysteric, are forced to flee their Naples home for America where Lucia follows her dream of high school, her mother, eventually fired from her job as a chocolate dipper, hers as a vaudeville performer.

Although a story of hardship, of tragedy, of the abuses of power, of dreams quashed this is essentially a life affirming novel. Wonderfully written and full of vividly portrayed characters. It is no exaggeration to say the story of Lucia and, in particular, Teresa captured my heart from the beginning even if I felt the book never really got fully under way until their arrival in America.

Historically rich on all levels, I felt the author did exceptionally well to touch on so many issues whilst managing to maintain my interest throughout.

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