In Rerum Natura

About the Book

The protagonists of In Rerum Natura lived in a world that the Great Depression and the Second World War dissolved forever. In Rerum Natura tries to recapture the essence of a South Brooklyn version of that world, compounded from ethnic neighborhoods, primal families, and parochial ethics. The love story that carries the novel is, however, universal and timeless, forged from undying Shakespearian metal and, as its title suggests, upon the eternal anvil of Nature’s powerful cycles.

The novel’s geo-demographic context is given relief in its language, both that of the narrator and that of his characters. South Brooklyn in the thirties—however nostalgically dulcified its perception in In Rerum Natura—was a hard and unforgiving place. It nevertheless contributed its proportional share of a generation of Americans that, selfishly, learned to survive and even prosper, and, selflessly, managed to change the world.

About the Author