The Many Paths of Love

About the Book

In anguish, Gus Antonelli cries out in the night, “For years, I’ve lived close to my brother’s house, eaten at his table, played with his children, coveted his wife.” Such is the agony of Gus who sacrifices his love for Jenny for the sake of his identical twin Tony.

It all began when Jenny and her dear friend Sara shared a table in a crowded restaurant in Philadelphia with two handsome, charming young men visiting from New York where they were preparing to open an upscale restaurant. They offered Jenny a job. Observing the twins, Sara later asks, “I wonder what happens when twins fall in love with the same girl?” Jenny’s heart is broken when her father dies, and soon afterwards, Sara commits suicide. She collapses and is taken by Jonathan Holbrook, whom she met at her father’s funeral, to his psychiatric hospital for a few days. Returning home, she is haunted by the loss of the two people she loved, so she accepts the job offer and flees to New York. Maria, the twins’ mother, invites Jenny to stay with them in a condominium high above Central Park. The kind, good-natured Antonellis become her family. Tony glows with love for Jenny, and she feels the same way about him. However, in one unguarded moment, she sees Gus gazing at her like Tony does. Unable to marry one and hurt the other, she returns home to complete her final year at Drexel University and earn her degree in fashion design.

Desperately poor, Jenny sells her little house and rents a cheap apartment in center city Philadelphia where she’s near the university and can work evenings in a department store. Jonathan finds her and lavishes her with expensive gifts. One year later, lonely and weary of her struggle, she allows him to trick her into marriage. He promises to help her to jump-start her career, a promise he immediately breaks, demanding they have a family first because of his age.

Jonathan’s mother, elegant Millicent Holbrook, admires Jenny’s beauty and talent. She gives the couple a lovely Christmas wedding. She also encourages Jenny’s ambition and helps her open a boutique She introduces Jenny to Gary Durant, owner of a clothing factory in New York. He hires Jenny to design dresses for him, also prevails on her to model for him from time to time. Her talent saves his ailing business. Gary also introduces Jenny to wealthy businessmen who soon have her designing gowns for their wives and wedding gowns for their daughters.

Jenny gives Jonathan a son they nickname LJ, meaning little Jon. Jonathan’s temper frightens his already nervous child. Jonathan becomes jealous of Jenny’s success as a designer and is perhaps jealous of the interest shown her by his mother, his brother Robert and two sisters, Jill and Myra. Jonathan spends most of his time at his hospital. Following the deaths of both his father and mother, he becomes an alcoholic and suffers a complete breakdown, during which time Jenny nurses him back to health. A fire at his hospital, in addition to his reckless spending, plunge Jonathan into debt and into the arms of a socialite who bails him out of trouble. By now, Jenny is quite wealthy, but he refuses her help. After accidentally seeing him kissing the socialite, Jenny has a violent fight with the woman, after which Jonathan strikes Jenny. She orders him out of the house he had built for her. When she seeks medical help for her bruised face, she learns she’s pregnant but doesn’t reveal this to Jonathan until they meet much later at Disney World when he is furious and threatens taking custody of the child.

After her divorce, Tony comes to Philadelphia to help Jenny manage her businesses which now includes a lingerie factory she inherited from a friend. They move the factory to the suburbs, not far from her boutique that’s located in a little Victorian house. Gus is aware that Jenny knows how he feels about her and is certain she’ll never

About the Author

At age 86, the author hung up her tennis racquet and edited her trilogy of novels written years ago: Jenny’s Family Circle, Jenny’s Fame, The Many Paths of Love. The characters in her books became like family, so she wanted to see them in print. Two nonfiction books: Altoona and the Pennsylvania Railroad and Voices of the Pennsylvania Railroad were published in 1999 and 2001. Now in print is her young adult novel Abby and the Ugly Man (Mr. Lincoln). Also published were 95 of her stories, essays and poems. Her articles about present-day concerns appear monthly in area newspapers.