ZIO'S JEWEL by Tony Compagno

ZIO'S JEWEL is a short novel dealing primarily with a young Italian-American named Gaetano Mosca and two young women blood-related but separated by many decades. Gaetano is known as Zio to Lucia Ascensio, his brother's young daughter, in the early 1900s in San Francisco at the time of the great International Exposition from which only the famous Palace of Fine Arts remains. Gaetano's relationship with Lucia is a special one, a complex one, one that he likes to think is as pure as the one that his hero Dante had with Beatrice. The books chapters alternate between those early days and present time, with Lucia's granddaughter Melody LaGuida preparing for a marriage at the very church in which Lucia's first attempt at marriage was aborted by an unfortunate incident in the new church in North Beach. The entire story is a bit of historical fiction that explores the subjects of love, duty, self-esteem, determination, fate, and a number of other very human concerns dramatized in the interactions of these ordinary people.