Trigiani’s frothy novels make wonderful summer reading. Her writing is engaging as are her characters. A frame tale, the story of Lucia is told to Kit, a struggling playwright living in Greenwich Village in an apartment building that has fallen on hard times. Elderly Lucia lives on the top floor and is surrounded by boxes from B. Altman’s, the bygone department store where she was once an independent-minded career girl, to the despair of her traditional Italian family. She was also once “the most beautiful girl in Greenwich Village,” but she lives alone and has never married. How this came to be is the story she tells Kit over tea. Trigiani, as in other novels, weaves the generational stories of Italian immigrants skillfully into the narrative, and her love of fashion and the fine art of sewing are also on display. 304 pp.
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