My Trilogy Time w/ Adriana Trigiani is taking me down the Reader’s Road

My Trilogy Time reading challenge has been interesting yet is coming to an end for now. The reason for that is more due to me than the books but let’s begin by going over the trio of novels that I chose to reread, which turned out well.

Adriana Trigiani is perhaps best known for her Big Stone Gap series but I got to know her many of the stand alone books she’s put out over the years like Lucia, Lucia and The Shoemaker’s Wife. Her trilogy of stories about  Valentine Roncalli and the shoemaker legacy of her family began in 2009 with Very Valentine.

When we first met our leading lady, she’s attending a family wedding and fending off inquiries about her single status, preferring to focus more on the Angelini Shoe Company that her grandfather started and which her beloved grandmother still runs.

The custom made wedding shoe business is not what it used to be yet Valentine is determined to do more with it. Due to an unexpected opportunity to be part of a last minute repair for a film shooting nearby(it happens to be an adaptation of Lucia, Lucia!), she gets an invitation to join in a special competition for a window display at Macy’s, a real stepping stone for her and the future of the company:

She also gets a few steps forward in romance as two new men enter her life; Roman, an up and coming chef with his own restaurant and Gianluca, a cobbler in Italy who Valentine mets on a buying trip with her grandmother , who happens to have some romance of her own with Gianluca’s father!

Lots of engaging characters and situations to deal with here but at the heart of it is Valentine, trying to blend her love of family tradition with an independent modern spirit. Walking back into this story has been a welcome relief for me as the daily headlines keep getting worse on so many fronts. Fortunately, seeing how Valentine deals with life and love has boosted my spirits indeed:

The story continues with Brava, Valentine  in 2010. With her grandmother planning to marry the love of her life and moving to Italy, Valentine has to run the show company on her own or so she thinks at first.

Instead, her grandmother divides the business between Valentine and her brother Alfred, a Wall Street banker who has fallen on hard times. She and Alfred have never gotten along, plus he’s full of doubts about keeping the shoe business going.

Nevertheless, she persists in expanding the business and while searching for a factory to produce a line of every day wear, Valentine finds some long lost relatives and a family secret begins to unravel.

Toss that in some ups and down regarding her love life and Valentine is in for quite the emotional ride here! I have to admit that one of my favorite scenes in this book is a very turbulent Thanksgiving dinner, where feelings flow free and the in-laws of the Roncalli family have their say for once:

This all wraps up in 2013’s The Supreme Macaroni Company, a surprising title to be sure.

That name refers to a former business in the Midwest where Valentine ultimately opens her shoe factory and so many other developments occur, including a wedding, a birth and a funeral.

It won’t say more than that about the plot but what I will say is that what keeps you turning the pages is the mix of heartwarming characters who feel very real and the various emotions that our main character has to navigate through out the course of the story. It’s a rough ride at times yet well worth the taking.

Plus, the whole overwhelming dynamics of a large and loud yet loving family do have a universal appeal, much in the style of Moonstruck or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Trigiani does a more streamlined version of that with a deep flair for strong women being the center of these occasionally chaotic worlds:

Originally, I was planning to finish this challenge by finishing up a trilogy that I didn’t complete the first time around (Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart books).

However, with it being this late in the year and all of the chaos going on the news as we speak, I just don’t have the spoons for taking that on.

So, my choice is to read down some of my ever growing TBR, calling it “Down the Reader’s Road”(yes, Agatha All Along is my new favorite show and influence these days!). The books that I am using for this are my Book of the Month Club editions and starting off , of course, The Good Left Undone  by Adriana Trigiani.

This novel starts in modern day Italy as Matelda finds that it’s best to tell her granddaughter Amina a long held secret regarding her own mother and a wartime love story that changed many lives in more ways than one.

I have high hopes for this challenge to get me through the rest of this year and into the next with some comforting certainty about the nature of storytelling and humanity. That’s my hope, anyway! No doubt, with plenty of wonderful writers like Trigiani around, we’ll all be in a better place even if it’s just between the pages of a good book: