Widely known and loved for her moving 'Big Stone Gap' trilogy and her bestseller 'Lucia, Lucia' Adriana Trigiani returns to the pageantry of small-town life with a heart-rending story of forbidden love . . .
In the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in the Bari region of Italy made a mass migration to the promised land: America. They settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania, and re-created their former lives in their new home - down to the very last detail of who lived next door to whom.
The hardworking Castellucas work the land outside Roseto. Nella, the middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life 'in town', far from the rigours of farm life, which have taken a toll on her mother and placed the Castellucas low in the social strata. But Nella's dreams of making her own fortune shift when she meets and falls in love with Renato Lanzara, a wordly, handsome, devil-may-care poet who has a way with words that makes him irresistible. Their friendship ignites into a passionate affair that Nella is certain will lead to marriage. When he disappears without explanation, Nella is left with a shattered heart. Five years later, Renato's sudden return to Roseto, just before Nella's wedding. leaves her and all the townsfolk shaken. For although Renato has chosen a path very different from Nella's own, they are fated to live together, in the same town, for the rest of their lives.
An epic of small-town life, spanning a century in one family's struggle to preserve their culture and unity in a foreign land, 'Queen Of The Big Time' is the story of the determined, passionate woman who shepherds them through decades of change but who cannot forget her first and, she believes, true love.
