Publisher's Weekly Review
Biro's gripping if uneven debut novel (after the memoir Listening to Pain) brings together three disparate characters through a transcontinental bone marrow transplant. In the early 1990s, Luca Taviano, a rambunctious Catholic nine-year-old boy, is stricken with a virulent case of leukemia in a small Italian town. Meanwhile, Nina Vocelli, the nurse in charge of his care, is having a forbidden affair with her hospital's oncologist, and Joseph Neiman, a Brooklyn rabbi, grapples with personal and professional doubts. All of their lives are transformed when an international donor database identifies Joseph as a bone marrow match for Luca. This raises questions for Luca's adoptive grandmother, Letizia, who is surprised to learn of her grandson's Ashkenazi DNA profile. After Letizia dies, Nina takes care of Luca and researches his Jewish family history. The author, who himself received a lifesaving bone marrow transplant, writes with veracity about medical care and explores the tension between Jews and Catholics in Italy during WWII. As the years pass, Luca bonds with Joseph on visits to New York, and Biro builds suspense over a long-held secret about Luca's father, who died in a car accident. While the ending is lackluster and sentimental, there is plenty of heart and compassion. Biro's ambitious dive into the mysteries of family origins will move readers. (Nov.)
Booklist Review
Luca hasn't had an easy life. Since losing his parents at a young age, he's lived with his grandparents in northern Italy. Now, sick with leukemia, he is not responding to traditional methods of treatment. After a rocky start with his nurse, Nina, the two have become good friends. She suggests trying a bone marrow transplant, a treatment that's still experimental in the early 1990s, when this story is set. The process of finding a donor connects him with a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York. How can such a close DNA match be possible between an American of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and an Italian Catholic? Luca's father had been adopted during WWII, from a convent, as Luca's grandfather maintained. In helping his grandson get well, Luca's grandfather must confront a dark secret. Physician and author Biro (The Language of Pain, 2010) here examines the secrets that people carry and how they shape and distort the ways one sees the world. A story of interconnection and the boundaries that too often keep us apart.