Thieves Never Steal in the Rain

Births mark beginnings, while funerals toll in endings. Yet there resides so much in-between drama in the timeline of an extended family: moments of intense joy, times of heart-wrenching grief, and the day-to-day plodding of ups and downs that color the struggle with loss in all of human existence. In a series of linked short stories that superbly capture the emotions her characters’ experience, the author deftly chronicles the personal episodes that transform the lives of five Italian-American cousins during the final years before the death of one of the family patriarchs.

AUTHOR

Marisa Labozzetta

Marisa Labozzetta is the author of the novel, Stay With Me, Lella (Guernica 1999), and a collection of linked stories, Thieves Never Steal in the Rain. She was a finalist for the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for her collection of short stories, At the Copa (Guernica 2006). Her work has appeared in The American Voice, Beliefnet.com, The Florida Review, The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, Show Me a Hero: Great Contemporary Stories About Sports, and the bestselling When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, among other publications. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Every one of the glimpses into the lives of the Ficola cousins is a keeper and proves that Labozzetta, in her second collection of short fiction, is a master of this form of writing. Throughout the book, the author reveals how belief or disbelief in the supernatural, betrayal, abandonment, self-sacrifice, and, most of all, love can nudge our lives onto new and unexpected paths.