The Madonnas of President Street
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About the Book
The Madonnas of President Street is about Vivian Viola, 39, her 17 year-old daughter Melanie, and their struggle against adversity, which they more or less win. It takes place in 1984 with a 1960s look-back and begins during a move from one of their countless Manhattan sublets. The tight real estate market forces them to leave the borough after 15 years and move to Brooklyn, NY where Vivian grew up.
Melanie is about to leave for her freshman year at Smith College, something that engenders pride and resentment in both of them. Melanie has misgivings about leaving unless her mother can come up with a boyfriend--or a husband. Vivian has been living close to the edge since Melanie was an infant, but refuses to let whether or not she´s single be a standard of accomplishment.
The weekend before she is set to leave, Melanie decides to skip college and join the army to pay for her education rather depend on Vivian. Her father left for Vietnam before she was born and never returned, and Melanie can´t understand why her mother is upset or why a woman joining the armed forces isn´t consistent with the feminist ideals her mother embraced over a decade earlier.
Melanie represents a new generation and a new sensibility that is as threatening to Vivian as Vivian was to her parents. Mrs. Rotoli, their new landlady in Brooklyn who is in her 80s, is a product of the Roman Catholic Church and the old order. She disapproves of them both and wears her beliefs on her sleeve as she dresses like one of the Madonnas on the book´s cover.
"...the raw grittiness of New York speech and the language used is powerful, especially during the many arguments between mother and daughter...the dialogue is fast-paced and vigorous, leaving us with an entertaining novel that is easy and a delight to read."
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About the Author
Born in Camden, New Jersey, John Sandman has had four short novels published in Canada--Eating Out, Fords Eat Chevs, the Brief Case of A Fat Man and Declining Gracefully, plus one in the UK--Fords Eat Chevs. An excerpt from another novel, Praying For Rain, was published by New York-based Birch Brook Press in 1997 in the anthology A Double Play of Underground Baseball Novellas. He has received writing grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. He lives in New York and writes about information technology for Securities Industry News.