Lucille Bellucci's Books

Journey from Shanghai

By: Lucille Bellucci

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The Good Old Days in China are over by the time Rafaella Bardini turns eight. She knows war and privation as she breathes air. When she and her Italian father and Chinese mother are exiled by the Communist government, they arrive in Italy with one suitcase each and 150 American dollars. Her father dying, Rafaella finds herself, at 18, head of the family. They are living in a refugee relocation camp in bombed-out Catania, Sicily, not a city in 1952 where a job can be found. Rafaella travels to Rome, and there looks up her shipboard friend, Stefano. He seems to know Rome well already, and impresses Rafaella with his self-assurance. A cynical young man, he has observed that Italians liked to observe the public conventions while dodging them in private. Life here isn't so different from that in Shanghai. Rafaella, too, begins learning how to live in this new country. Her journey is a process that engages all sense and wit. Learning has a price. As she looks back upon the landscape of her life, she assesses the different faces of courage she has known and recognizes the strong heart imbued in every one of them.

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Page Count

304

Publisher

iUniverse

Published Date

ISBN 10

0595343732

ISBN 13

9780595343737

The Snake Woman of Ipanema

By: Lucille Bellucci

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The Snake Woman of Ipanema

By: Lucille Bellucci

When Maggie Dalton finds a slaughtered black cockerel on her car, Tonia, her maid, says, "Someone means you harm." Jon Dalton's affair with a Brazilian woman is skewing Maggie's soul. She broods on the occult. Beneath the surface of Rio de Janeiro’s good life runs the cult of spiritism, brought over 450 years ago by captive slaves from West Africa. Far from her Michigan home, Maggie learns of that Brazil when she seeks her answers from the priestess who rules the underground. Only Tonia realizes where Maggie is headed. She is terrified, yet conscience compels her to follow. Through a torturous path, she tracks Maggie from Rio de Janeiro north to Salvador, the cradle of Brazilian spiritism. Maggie meets the healer, Cabral, revered by the hopeless, and Tonia does battle for Maggie's soul. The knife turns. The knife always turns.

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Age

Page Count

282

Publisher

iUniverse

Published Date

ISBN 10

0595094775

ISBN 13

9780595094776

Pastiche

Stories and Such

By: Lucille Bellucci

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Pastiche

Stories and Such

By: Lucille Bellucci

In her stories, Lucille Bellucci covers the world, where she has lived, with her peculiar off-center view. Her humor is a just treatment of comedy, and no one can deliver a grim look at history as she has lived it. Seven of Bellucci's stories and essays have won first-place awards. They make you laugh because you can see the thoughts, action and inner tremors. They are unrehearsed Life. There is plenty of sadness and drama, as well, and she does not flinch at those in the perplexities of that same life. Her favorite humorist is James Thurber, and it shows. Oddly, her other favorite reading is novels on war, because the good ones have no time for artifice. Her own novels are exactly that. Ride along with her and see inside her head, if you can.

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