Blue Italian — Rita Ciresi

Rosa comes from a working-class Italian neighborhood of narrow houses with chipped Madonnas in the front yards. Gary grew up with blue swimming pools and overdone bar mitzvahs. Rosa's a social worker who read Freud at Southern Connecticut State College. Gary's a fast-talking Yale law student who does his homework with the Knicks on TV. Yet from the moment Gary and Rosa meet, fate takes a hand. In one night, they go to bed. In one year, they are married.

So begins a hilarious, heartrending love affair between two unique individuals who don't quite add up to the ideal couple. Rosa and Gary struggle to navigate the choppy waters of intimacy--until Gary is diagnosed with terminal illness, and Rosa realizes the power of her love--and the crushing force of regret.

Frank and warm, crackling with razor-sharp wit, Blue Italian is a novel a lot like life itself: equal parts of laughter and pain--often at the very same time.