Books by Novelist Carole Giangrande

A Gardener on the Moon

Faced with the illness of his wife Marie-Hélène, Pierre LeBlanc finds himself overwhelmed by the past — a Franco-American who fled Massachusetts after World War II to escape his memories as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and the English language in which he lived this experience. He also left behind Lorraine and the lost child they were both afraid to mention. Years later in Montreal — during the terrorist crisis of 1970 —  his daughter Danielle struggles to claim Pierre's abandoned language and her American roots, while Marie-Hélène's illness confronts him with his unspoken fear of suffering and death. Alone on his farm, he looks after the land until an encounter from the past helps him come to terms with the sorrows of his life.

An Ordinary Star

In her last days, Sofia Fiore remembers a time of radiance and darkness. She lived in the Twenties, when the first Zeppelin flew over Manhattan and when a solar eclipse dazzled the Bronx, N.Y. Drawn to the wondrous, she never stopped seeing extraordinary things. In the shadows of depression and war, she reveres her father, the good Dr. Gentile, a naive follower of Mussolini; her mother Livia, whose fading light heralds her death and her anarchist grandparents living on the lower East Side of Manhattan.

She witnesses the dramatic escape of her beloved Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul from the flaming Hindenburg - only to see them vanish. Many years later, Sofia is stricken by a missing chunk of the past as it smashes through memory. As she's dying, she grapples with a time that began in hope and ended in uncertainty until she comes to terms with her family's legacy of truth, illusion and wonder. Read more about An Ordinary Star...

"Sofia 's small world of family and neighbourhood is vividly evoked and powerfully described...beautiful and haunting, written with a lyrical acceptance...the reader is left with an appreciation of Giangrande's skill and vision."
-- Quill and Quire

"What Giangrande has accomplished in An Ordinary Star  is far from ordinary...a gentle unfurling of both the tragedies and the joys ( Sofia ) has beheld in the course of her light and dark dappled life."
- Books in Canada

"Giangrande brings the flavour of Sofia Fiore's multi-ethnic neighbourhood to life...descriptive passages are buoyant and poetic...The references to music particularly evocative...The reader is transported along with Sofia, upon the musical notes, to a place where it is possible to believe in the novel's wondrous events..."
--The Winnipeg Free Press

A Forest Burning

Spanning two countries and the turbulent era of the 1960's, the Viet Nam war and social conflict, A Forest Burning is a suspense-filled novel about memory, truth and forgiveness. Read more about A Forest Burning...

"Carole Giangrande's rich and ambitious new novel, A Forest Burning , is a story of generations of loss, soul baring, and secrets."
-- Quill & Quire

"In chronicling three generations of war-inflicted loss, in crisscrossing the U.S.-Canadian border during the years of war and protest, Giangrande takes on serious themes and handles them with confidence. And her language is carefully wrought, often epigrammatic."
-- The Danforth Review

Missing Persons

In her first collection of short fiction, Giangrande explores the lives of people who inhabit the broken terrain of the late twentieth century. A man saves memory from the blur of media events by finding a tool more potent than television...an Ontario farmer reaps a strange harvest in the garden of a Lebanese exile...a photographer uses her creative eye to unravel the mystery of a missing friend...an antiwar march pushes a woman into the life of her beloved twin destroyed by Vietnam...Faced with the disappearance of homeland, memory and innocence, these short stories powerfully explore interpretive material for life's dance.

" Those who aren't short-story fans will undoubtedly change their minds by the time they finish this book. It's an insightful and heart wrenching collection that I, for one, couldn't put down."
-- The Edmonton Sun

"...a prose that vaults and dazzles."
--The Ottawa Citizen

"Carole Giangrande writes with deep feeling and redeeming compassion."
-- M.T. Kelly

"Told with integrity and tenderness, these heart-wrenching stories personalize the tragedies of war, abuse, and dislocation, and cause us to re-examine issues to which we have become almost immune. Giangrande is a fine, humanitarian writer."
-- Jane Urquhart