Lost Hearts »

Vincent Panella grew up in Queens, New York and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School with the intention of becoming an engineer in the age of Sputnik. Doses of Homer, Whitman and too many writers to mention here cut short his engineering career and he went on to study literature and then fiction writing at the Iowa Workshop. He worked for a short time in Dubuque Iowa as a reporter for the Telegraph Herald, all the while continuing to write fiction. He has taught writing of all kinds, and for several years he served as the Writing Specialist at Vermont Law School. He is the author of the memoir The Other Side, Growing up Italian in America, and the novel Cutter's Island, which won a ForeWord fiction award.

Written by an award winning novelist, these stories present a rich and candid account of growing up and growing old in Sicily and America. The twenty-three stories are separate, but also linked. Original Sin, the opening story set in Sicily in 1900, pushes a father-son conflict to its tragic conclusion. Its protagonist, Peter Marino, emigrates to America, where his descendants experience the conflicts, hopes, and needs that add up to the human condition.