Nina Romano

The Secret Language of Women - Wayfarer Trilogy Nina Romano

Description for Sales People:-Nina Romano is an accomplished and published poet and author of short shories. This is her first novel. -This is the first book in the Wayfarer trilogy and set in Bejing. The next two books will continue through the centuries to Sicily and Brooklyn. -Analogous to the women s backstories in "The Joy Luck Club" and Richard McKenna s "The Sand Pebbles," but set in an earlier time period. The language, lyrical and full of sensory richness, reflects the author s poetic skills."Review Quotes: Here is a gripping tale of swift passion and interrupted courtship set against the background of the Boxer Rebellion, an epic tale of love and romance that is at once lyrical, unflinching, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting. If you re a fan of novels with scope and ambition, novels you get lost in and can t put down, novels whose characters will haunt your dreams, then you ll want to read The Secret Language of Women. John Dufresne, "No Regrets, Coyote""Review Quotes: "Rich with history, "The Secret Language of Women" offers a beautiful and harrowing landscape of love found, lost, and hunted for at all costs and with dire consequences. Like the bound feet, so idealized in her novel, Romano s characters are broken and reformed into both the beautiful and the grotesque. Haunting." Barbara Wood, "New York Times" bestselling author"Publisher Marketing: Set in China in the late 1800 s, "The Secret Language of Women" tells the story of star-crossed lovers, Zhou Bin Lian, a Eurasian healer, and Giacomo Scimenti, an Italian sailor, driven apart by the Boxer Rebellion. When Lian is seventeen years old, she accompanies her Swiss father, Dr. Gianluca Brasolin, fluent in Italian, to tend the Italian ambassador, at the Summer Palace of Empress Dowager, where she meets and falls in love with Giacomo. Through voyage and adventure, their love intensifies, but soon is severed by Lian s dutiful promise as the wife to another. Forbidden from pursuing her chosen profession as a healer, and despised because she does not have bound feet, she is forced to work in a cloisonne factory while her in-laws raise her daughter, Ya Chen. It is in Nushu, the women s secret writing, that she chronicles her life and her hopes for the future. Rebelling against the life forced upon her, she empowers herself to act out against the injustice and becomes the master of her own destiny. But her quest for freedom comes at a costly price: The life of someone close to her, lost in a raging typhoon, a grueling journey to the Yun-kang Caves, and a desperate search for beauty and love in the midst of brutality."

Contributor Bio:  Romano, Nina Nina Romano earned an M. A. from Adelphi University and an M. F. A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She is the author of four poetry collections: Cooking Lessons from Rock Press, submitted for the Pulitzer Prize, Coffeehouse Meditations, from Kitsune Books, She Wouldn't Sing at My Wedding, from Bridle Path Press, and Faraway Confections from Aldrich Press. Romano has published two poetry chapbooks: Prayer in a Summer of Grace and Time's Mirrored Illusion both from Flutter Press. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She co-authored Writing in a Changing World. Her debut short story collection, The Other Side of the Gates, has recently been published from Bridle Path Press. More about the author at: www.ninaromano.com