It happened by the grace of God that Joseph Santangelo won his wife in a card game. On a September night so hot that the good Catholics of New York wonder if their city has slipped into hell, the butcher Joseph Santangelo invites his friends to play pinochle. At the end of a long, sweaty, boozy evening, his friend Lino Falconetti, addled by wine and heat, bets the hand of his daughter, Catherine-and Santangelo wins. Santangelo's modern new wife clashes immediately with his superstitious, half-mad mother-and Catherine is horrified when the daughter they raise turns out to have more in common with the old world than the new. As the years slide past, the city changes around them, but Little Italy's household saints hold their world together. "A marvelous, lovable novel." -Joyce Maynard "From the very first sentence of Francine Prose's fifth novel, you know you're under the spell of a first-rate storyteller." -The New York Times "A minor miracle . . . documenting the madness and the grace of God in everyday life." -Newsweek Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.