A dark secret born out of World War II lies at the heart of a Sicilian American family in this emotional and sweeping saga of guilt, revenge, and, ultimately, redemption.After soldiers vacate the Sicilian hillside town of Melilli in the summer of 1943, the locals celebrate, giving thanks to their patron saint, Sebastian. Amid the revelry, all it takes is one fateful moment for the destiny of … the destiny of nine-year-old Salvatore Vassallo to change forever. When his twin brothers are killed playing with an unexploded mortar shell, Salvatore’s faith is destroyed. As the family unravels, and fear ignites among their neighbors that the Vassallo name is cursed, one tragedy begets another.
Desperate to escape this haunting legacy, Salvatore accepts the help of an Italian soldier with fascist ties who ushers him and his sister, Nella, into a new beginning in America. In Middletown, Connecticut, in the immigrant neighborhood known as Little Melilli, these three struggle to build new lives for themselves. But a dangerous choice to keep their secrets hidden erupts in violence decades later. When Salvatore loses his inquisitive American-born son, David, they all learn too late the price sons pay for their fathers’ wars.
Written with elegiac prose, How Fires End delves into the secret wars of men; the sins they cannot bury; and a life lived in fear of who will reveal them, who will survive them, and who will forgive them.
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This beautifully written novel is about secrets and how they can affect a family through the generations. It’s told in three parts – David, the son; Salvatore, the father and Vincenzo, a friend and father figure who helped bring Salvatore and his sister Nella from Sicily to America at the end of WWII. Even though they are a loving family they all struggle with the secrets that they keep from David.
It’s very interesting the way that the author told this story — first we see the outcome of keeping secrets and then we learn the secrets and the reasons for hiding the secrets after the war. The three of them agree that they won’t discuss what happened to them in Sicily during the war to the next generation and even though their reasons make sense, the result of that decision is catastrophic and they all learn too late that the price that was paid for their secrets was too high.
This is a story of war and secrets, family betrayals and family curses that can cause irreparable harm when they are carried into the next generation. The writing is beautiful and the descriptions of Sicily are incredible. I highly recommend this beautiful novel about family and secrets.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
A long but spellbinding debut novel. How love & hate shape life. Even running from Sicily to America does not distance you from what your heart holds. Did David self-destruct like the innocent twins or like his father?
How Fires End is Marco Rafalà’s debut novel, and a stunning one it is, all about families and secrets and trauma. Told in reverse chronological order, How Fires End begins with the story of David, the son of a Sicilian immigrant in Middletown, CT. David’s mother died when he was very young, leaving him in the hands of an emotionally-damaged, reticent father. Though his father, Salvatore, tried to erase his own past and his wife’s presence from David’s life, his son nonetheless inherits the aftereffects of that history with its family rivalries reaching back generations. These events culminate in the small Sicilian town of Melilli during World War II, and the repercussions are carried forward when the families involved immigrate to America. Like a delectable lasagna, the story is revealed in layers, starting from the present and working backwards.
The book brought to mind the stories in the news about a year ago in which studies supported the idea that the effects of trauma can reverberate down the generations through epigenetics. These epigenetic changes modify the expression of our genes without changing our DNA code itself. In response to changes in the womb, genes are turned on or off by tiny chemical tags are added to or removed from our DNA, affording a method of adapting without a permanent shift in our genome. How Fires End is a fascinating fictional study of how intergenerational trauma may be psychosocial in nature, but I promise it may be part epigenetic.
The prose is gorgeous, particularly that involved in describing gardening or cooking. The descriptions of Sicily were delightful. I look forward further works from Marco Rafalà.
Marco Rafalà’s “How Fires End” is a Triumph! It is a powerful ache that you read until you find relief.
Rafalà puts his emotion on the pages; poignant moments shared between the characters and across seas and continents. He literally leaves your heart to cry or pound! All wrapped up in the hope I trust he wants us to believe in.
“How Fires End” is more than a story, it is an absolute truth being shared after generations of secrets.
Do not miss this debut novel, for I am sure this is the first of many evocative, strong, and must read novels by Rafalà.
What happens when faith blinds us to our own humanity? How Fires End is part war story and aftermath, part mythology, a lamentation shot through with melancholy and pathos. Rafalà writes of the mothers and fathers and sons and daughters of Melilli, Sicily, with such care and tenderness that to read it was like listening to the breathing out and collapse of an accordion — history folding over onto itself, sighing out a mournful story on notes of stone and stars. We yearn with David, grieve with Salvatore, shoulder the yoke of history with Vincenzo, console and heal with Nella as each tells a story of wars waged, battles lost, and secrets kept.
Marco Rafalà paints a masterpiece with words.
“A dark secret born out of World War II lies at the heart of a Sicilian American family in this emotional and sweeping saga of guilt, revenge, and, ultimately, redemption.”
HOW FIRES END is the debut novel of this stunningly talented author. I had to keep reminding myself over and over that is a debut novel. The writing is superb, and I was quickly drawn into the story of this family.
Written from the perspectives of Salvatore, his sister Nella, his son David, and his friend Vincenzo the story begins in Middletown, Connecticut where the families settled over time. After the shocking ending of the first section, we are then thrown back in time to postwar Melilli, Sicily where nine-year-old Salvatore’s twin brothers are killed by a mortar shell and the lives of two families would be forever changed. Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle the reader is able to slowly piece together fragments of the story and eventually unravel the secrets that have affected the families over generations. The book ends in Middletown as the consequence of the long buried secrets is realized.
At times my breath was taken away as I felt the heartaches the Vassallo family endured. I was frustrated with the betrayals and the price that sons had to pay for their fathers’ wars. This is a culture where nothing is stronger than family, yet family can be destroyed by pride and senseless revenge. I kept hoping the families involved would recognize this before being completely destroyed.
This multi-generational story is artfully woven through with the background of the families and descriptions of the Sicilian landscape, the traditional foods and rich culture, and old-world religion. I highly recommend this book and suspect the characters will linger in your memories for some time.
Beautiful, mesmerizing, consoling, and under immaculate control, Marco Rafalà’s How Fires End is a powerful novel about the religion we create for ourselves as we face that which perhaps even God has not imagined for humanity.
Marco Rafalà ignites all kinds of fires in this brightly burning novel fueled by old vendettas and unresolved resentments. A tremendous, well-crafted debut.
How Fires End is a raised fist of a novel, one filled with men’s brutal tenderness and tender brutality. It is both a subtle and powerful indictment of the silences between generations and a poignant testament to the bond between sons and fathers of all kinds. A blazing debut by an important new Italian American voice.
How Fires End explores the complicated bind of family, attempting to answer the age-old question of where family history ends and the self begins. This is a beautiful meditation on time, memory, and consequences.
What happens when the fires we nurture with hate die? How Fires End is a breathtaking multigenerational story of fathers and sons who yearn for warmth amid the ashes of their own secrets and lies. Generous, bold, epic, Marco Rafalà’s novel is a triumph.
How Fires End struck me at my core. Part mourning, part witness, this is a story that yearns to make peace with the endless, brutal wounds of war. It will haunt me with an unanswerable question: How do we heal from the pain of the unspoken when a family’s secrets are carried — across seas and generations — out of love and protection?
How Fires End commences with such authority and grace that it hardly seems the work of a debut novelist. There is a great weight in the tenderness and simplicity of the voice of the narrators. It has gravitas without any sacrifice of beauty.
This is a wondrous novel that burns with secret histories, arcing across space and time, voiced by characters who speak their separate truths with resilience and dignity. A gorgeous debut.
Marco Rafalà’s How Fires End is a devastating and gorgeously conceived novel of tragedy and redemption spanning generations and continents. The past is never the past for the Vassallo family; it stalks and curses their lives, first in Sicily and then decades later in America. Heartbreaking and beautifully wrought, Rafalà’s haunting debut is a must-read exploration of the perils of personal and political histories and how we try to overcome them.
A rich and unforgettable novel about heritage and loss, about our futures and our roots. How Fires End is intense and absorbing — a virtuoso performance by Marco Rafalà.
A haunting debut novel that shows us how the dark secrets of the old country can never be repressed. This is a poignant and powerful immigrants’ tale of reckoning, tragedy, and the search for redemption in a Sicilian family that learns it can never shed the claws of its past, even in this new American life.
As I started this book I was thinking that I was going to be reading about a Sicilian-family living during WWII, what I got was something so much better. I got a story of a young boy trying to find his way in the world with a father that did not grow up in America. I got the story of a father that had lost so much that all he wanted was to keep his son safe. The secrets that the father was keeping are the reason that they left their home country to come to America and the reason that he fears he will lose all that he loves.
How Fires End is an eye-opening look at how WWII not only affected those who fight in the war but those who lived in the towns that the war passed through. It is a look at a Sicilian family that is torn apart by things out of their control and then left to try to continue living. The story of two families who hold a grudge and have a rivalry that travels from their home country to a new country.
I enjoyed meeting these characters, learning about their lives, and seeing how they manage to live after seeing what they saw, losing what they did, and having to start their lives over in a new country.
This multilayered, astonishing novel takes you into the heart of a dark family legacy and twists you up with emotion on every page. How Fires End is beautifully written and startling in its revelations. I can’t stop thinking about this heartbreaking book.