Pieces of Someday

One Woman's Search for Meaning in Lawyering, Family, Italy, Church, and a Tiny Jewish High School

by Jan Vallone

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Pub Date Nov 23 2013 | Archive Date Sep 03 2014

Gemelli Press LLC

Biographies & Memoirs | Religion & Spirituality

Description

At the age of forty-four, Jan Vallone is everything her Italian American parents brought her up to be -- a lawyer, wife and mother who owns a vintage home and takes European vacations. But instead of feeling happy and successful, she's consumed by frustration and anxiety that threaten to shatter her marriage and have dimmed her faith.

Discarding prosperity and prestige, she takes a job teaching English at a yeshiva--an Orthodox Jewish high school, though she was raised Catholic. There, she opens her heart to her students, who bloom under her tutelage and teach her the meaning of faith and fulfillment.

Set in New York, Seattle and Italy, Pieces of Someday portrays how one woman fuses the facets of her life -- family, career, ethnicity, spirituality and dreams -- into a cohesive picture as luminous as stained glass.

Advance Praise

Vallone's narrative gift--by turns lyrical, funny, raw--and her awareness of grace provide the "fusion and repair" that render a life whole and meaningful. Read about her life and gain insight into yours. --Image Update

Pieces of Someday is a gripping chronicle of one woman's disappointments and blessings. In this striking debut, Jan Vallone writes with tenderness, wisdom, and humor about family, faith, and legacies, and finding a place in the world. -- Jocelyn Lieu, author of What Isn't There: Inside a Season of Change

Jan Vallone's memoir is something rare: a story that is deeply personal, and yet one that will resonate with countless contemporary women seeking some deeper gratification beneath the surface of success. Her candor and her pointillist's eye for detail emerge in writing crafted with power and precision. -- David Sobel, editor and writer, instructor at Eugene Lang College, The New School

In Pieces of Someday, Jan Vallone weaves vivid imagery and exquisite turns of phrase into a winning memoir of self-discovery and hope. -- Nita Sweeney, author of the memoir Memorial: Our Last Year on the Links

Pieces of Someday is a beautifully-written account of fathers and daughters, teachers and students, successes and failures--the wonderful offspring of what Vallone calls her "dominant ponder gene." Holding up a defiant hand against the cynicism that has come to mark so much of America's story, she insists that the greatest success may be measured, not in the things we accumulate, but in the lives we touch. -- Les Lamkin, teacher, author of the fiction collection Happiness is a Dead Wife

Jan Vallone pulls our common experience into her personal memoir by weaving surprises through every chapter--some challenging, some unsettling, some smashing into truth, others gently leading to revelation. -- Gwen Mansfield, teacher, author of the novel Experiment Station Road

Great memoirs are characterized by the quality of their attention to the universal, quotidian experiences of human life--and the honest, courageous exploration of the self, proverbial warts and all. By this measure, Jan Vallone's memoir, Pieces of Someday, is a wonderful addition to the literature. Vallone's narrative gift--by turns lyrical, funny, and raw--combined with her awareness of grace, provides the "fusion and repair" that render a life whole and meaningful. Read about her life and gain new insight into yours. -- Gregory Wolfe, editor ofImage and author of Intruding upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery