Cynthia Reeves
 

Falling Through the New World is a novel in stories that spans a century, from World War I Italy to modern-day America. The collection comprises fourteen stories. The eponymous piece, "Falling Through the New World," traces the experiences of a young married couple—Anna and Vincenzo Desiderio—as they negotiate the impact of the Great War on their lives. "La Dolentissima Madre" follows the parallel journeys of Anna and her mother as they grapple with their sister/daughter dying of the Spanish flu. "Sign Language" reaches back into the Desiderios' family history as Anna and Vincenzo's daughter, Rose, grapples with her father's desire to reunite with his dead wife. And in the final story, "All This the Heart Ordains," Kate returns to Italy after her mother's death to seek out an understanding of Rose's deep commitment to her Catholic faith.

"An absorbing story of ordinary people trying to find their way." —Kirkus Reviews (Link to full review)

 

"...an evocative portrait of both women and men in their struggles for economic stability, spiritual comfort, and emotional happiness. 

...Reeves' language is consistently both precise and lyrical and lures the reader into her saga." —Historical Novel Society (Link to full review)

 

"...the collection is daring in its treatment of illness and old age, invoking these liminal states with confident and unexpected shifts in perspective and temporality. [Falling Through the New World] ultimately argues that the inner lives of women are worthy of our care." —Independent Book Review (Link to full review)

 

"...a vividly written and skillfully crafted novel." Story Circle (Link to full review)

 

"*****Mesmerizing and engrossing..." —BookView, GOLD AWARD (Link to full review and interview)

 

"*****Reeves' prose is nothing short of mesmerizing. Her attention to emotive detail and her ability to paint vivid, poetic imagery through dialogue is remarkable. The novel skillfully portrays each character's internal struggle to merge the "old world" of their heritage—fading customs and beliefs—with the realities of a rapidly changing modern world. Reeves employs symbols and metaphors to bring critical themes to life, creating an immersive reading experience where the echoes of the characters' dialogues seem almost audible."

—Literary Titan, GOLD AWARD (Link to full review)

 

"Reeves has produced a powerful set of interlocked vignettes that shine with a sense of place, purpose, and connection, whether their characters reside in the Old Country or abroad."

—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

 

"*****...an epic tale about family, love, and faith..." Readers' Favorite (Link to full review)

 

"Bakhtin suggests that the novel has no formal form, that instead it is voracious in its nature, digesting other forms, inventing newer ones. That's what novels do, and that is what Cynthia Reeves in her new novel, Falling Through the New World, does: Effortlessly, it seems, she performs in this collection the Bakhtinian two-step, the Janus glancing glance that looks forward and back at the same time. This new new novel creates a unique physics of form, contains and expels its own unique dimensions of gravity. Its dynamic construction connects galaxies, star by exploding star, and shows you microscopic sadness in a handful of dust. This novel takes its place next to the likes of Love Medicine, A Year of Silence, and Winesburg, Ohio, but it also opens its own place and space, its own amorous apothecary, its own very vocal and evocative kind of silence and slice of time."

—Michael Martone, author of Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana and The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone

 

"There are so many ways to measure time, to wish ahead and to dream backwards. Here, with grace and deep, echoing wisdom, Cynthia Reeves yields four generations of an Italian family. Loss follows yearning. Love yields to regret. Distances are traversed, reversed, and finally emptied. The only seams in this lustrous novel in stories are those that come at the noble hands of an unforgettable tailor who dares to leave Italy behind to stake a bold claim in hope."

—Beth Kephart, author of My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera

 

"Cynthia Reeves's expertly crafted novel in stories finds artistry in manual labor and reveals the sacred in the everyday. Twists of lace ribbon, a tailor's steady stitching, thread looped into intricate patterns to make a wedding or mourning veil, a string of rosary beads, notches in a wooden tabletop marking time and human presence: Reeves uses these heirlooms and artifacts to seamlessly bind generations of an Italian-American family, old country to new, past to present. Falling Through the New World is a deeply moving story of the Desiderio family—a history in handwork that is the truest expression of faith in the future."

—Elizabeth Mosier, author of Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home

 

"Spanning four generations and two continents, the richly textured stories of Falling Through the New World explore the costs and promise of emigration from rural Italy to urban America. With meticulous and moving detail, Reeves depicts characters struggling to reconcile the beauty of their parents' customs and faith with their increasing irrelevance in the modern world. Members of the Italian-American diaspora and anyone who has sought a similar reconciliation with the past will find in this collection a voice of wisdom and compassion."

—Laura Bonazzoli, author of Consecration Pond: A Novel in Stories

 

"In richly described scenes, Cynthia Reeves traces familial patterns across time and continents. War, migration, illness, faith and faithlessness drive three generations of an Italian family apart and together. Reeves's characters endure, somehow, the great tragedies of the early twentieth century and live on through the patterns they create—the dance of marriage, the intricate lace her female characters weave, and other acts of faith and dedication. In such a slim volume—resplendent with highly textured scenes of domesticity—Reeves creates a testament to the fortitude of our immigrant forebears that is at once heartbreaking and uplifting."

—Margaret Luongo, author of History of Art and If the Heart Is Lean