Brava, Valentine (Valentine Trilogy #2)

by Adriana Trigiani

Overview

Adriana Trigiani's bestselling novels are beloved by millions of readers around the world. From the Big Stone Gap series to Lucia, Lucia, each is a sumptuous treat as Trigiani tells hilarious and romantic stories that we want to return to again and again.

Very Valentine, an instant New York Times bestseller, introduced the contemporary family saga of the Roncalli and Angelini families, artisans of handcrafted wedding shoes in Greenwich Village since 1903.

As Brava, Valentine begins, snow falls like glitter over Tuscany at the wedding of her grandmother, Teodora, and longtime love, Dominic. Valentine's dreams are dashed when Gram announces that Alfred, "the prince," Valentine's only brother and nemesis, has been named her partner at Angelini Shoes. Devastated, Valentine falls into the arms of Gianluca, a sexy Tuscan tanner who made his romantic intentions known on the Isle of Capri. Despite their passion for one another and Gianluca's heartfelt letters, a long-distance relationship seems impossible.

As Valentine turns away from romance and devotes herself to her work, mentor and pattern cutter June Lawton guides her through her power struggle with Alfred, while best friend and confidante Gabriel Biondi moves into 166 Perry Street, transforming her home and point of view. Savvy financier Bret Fitzpatrick, Valentine's first love and former fiancée who still carries a torch for her, encourages Valentine to exploit her full potential as a designer and a business woman with a plan that will bring her singular creations to the world.

A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity takes Valentine from the winding streets of Greenwich Village to the sun-kissed cobblestones of Buenos Aires, where she finds a long-buried secret hidden deep within a family scandal. Once unearthed, the truth rocks the Roncallis and Valentine is determined to hold her family together. More so, she longs to create one of her own, but is torn between a past love that nurtured her, and a new one that promises to sustain her.

Brava, Valentine, Trigiani's best novel yet, delivers a hilarious and poignant mix of colorful worlds and unforgettable characters as only she can create them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061969423
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/16/2010
Series:	Valentine Trilogy Series , #2
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	52,267
File size:	749 KB

About the Author

Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her books include the New York Times bestseller The Shoemaker's Wife; the Big Stone Gap series; Very Valentine; Brava, Valentine; Lucia, Lucia; and the bestselling memoir Don't Sing at the Table, as well as the young adult novels Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight. She wrote the screenplay for Big Stone Gap, which she also directed. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Place of Birth:

Roseto, Pennsylvania; (Grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia)

Education:

B.A. in Theatre from Saint Mary¿s College

Website:

http://www.adrianatrigiani.com

Read an Excerpt

Brava, Valentine
A Novel

Chapter One

Shake Down the Stars

The most magical thing happened on the morning of my grandmother's wedding in Tuscany. It snowed.

This is definitely Italian snow, not the New York City variety of midwinter precipitation. It doesn't fall in big, chunky flakes, nor is it heavy February hail that stings faces and turns sidewalks into solid sheets of ice. Rather, this is a flurry of white glitter that sifts through the air and melts instantly when it lands on the stone streets.

From my window at the Spolti Inn, it seems the entire village of Arezzo is swathed in a lace bridal veil. I sip hot milk and espresso from a warm mug as I watch an old horse-drawn carriage pull up in front of the inn to take us to the church. It doesn't feel like 2010. It could easily be a hundred years ago, not a modern touch in sight. Time stands still when people are happy. The ticking of real time resumes as soon as the rings are exchanged—for all of us.

Gram and Dominic's wedding plans were made quickly and effortlessly (the beauty of an eighty-year-old bride is that she really knows what she does and doesn't want). The airline tickets were bought online after a series of negotiations that eventually led to the splendid group rate that brought the Angelini and Roncalli families to this Italian village, into this moment, this morning.

We've all got roles in this romantic tale. The great-granddaughters are flower girls and the great-grandsons miniature groomsmen. My sisters Tess and Jaclyn and I are bridesmaids, as is our sister-in-law Pamela, while my mother is matron of honor. Dominic's granddaughter Orsola will represent his side of the family in the bridal party. My father will walk his mother-in-law down the aisle and into the arms of Dominic Vechiarelli.

"It snowed that day," I imagine I'll tell my children. I'll explain that after ten years as a widow, my grandmother found love again. Teodora Angelini's story relies on fate, timing, and the best of luck. It's also a story filled with hope—reminding all of us who haven't found love that, regardless of age, experience, or locale, it's a bad idea to close the book before "The End." You just never know. Not one of us, not even the bride, saw this day coming.

"Somebody shoot me!" my mother shouts from the hallway.

"My hair is a wet mop!"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Mike. We're in a freakin' hotel. Pipe down," I hear my father bark back.

"Do you have to yell?" Tess hollers from her room. "Why does this family always have to yell?" she yells.

"Shh. You'll wake the bay-bee!" Jaclyn whisper-shouts from her doorway.

My door bursts open. My mother stands in her full black slip with her hands on her hips. "I blew out my flatiron," she announces. A flatiron blowout in my family is worse than finding a lump. And we have found our share of lumps.

Mom's face is made up, alabaster-perfect and powdered down, ready for photographs from all angles. Her fake eyelashes give her enough oomph to pass as one of Beyoncé's backup singers. Her cheeks have a peachy Bobbi Brown glow, but that's all that's sparkling about my mother. She's beyond frazzled and close to tears.

"What's the matter, Ma? You're not yourself."

"You noticed?"

"What can I do to help?"

"I don't know. I'm just a-a-a.. . mess." She plops down on my bed. Half of her head is done, straight, glossy strands of freshly dyed chestnut brown, and the other half is still damp and crimped. Mom has naturally curly hair, but you would never know it from her left profile. From the front, however, she looks like a split-screen hair model on the Home Shopping Network: before and after the anti-frizz cream has been applied. She smoothes the front panels of her black slip over her thighs and pulls the hem over her knees.

I sit down next to her. "What's the problem?"

"Where do I begin?" Her eyes fill with tears. She pulls a tissue from under her slip strap and dabs the inner corners of her eyes so as not to irrigate the eyelash glue and cause the mink spikes to float away in her tears like paper canoes down the Nile.

"You look great."

"Do I?" The tears insta-dry in my mother's eyes, and she sits up straight. All it takes is a compliment to pull my mother back to her emotional center.

"Like a million bucks," I promise her.

"I brought my Clarisonic. So at least I'm exfoliated. That didn't blow in the outlet, thank God."

"Thank God."

"I don't know, Valentine. I just don't know. I'm completely off my game. I'm shaking. Look." Mom holds up her hand. It flutters partly from nerves, and partly because she's making it flutter. "This is so strange to me. To be a maid of honor at my own mother's wedding."

"Matron," I correct her. "The last over-sixty maid of anything was Mother Teresa."

Mom ignores the comment. She continues, "There's something so out of kilter about this whole thing."

"Gram is happy."

"Yes, yes, and I've adjusted to all of it! It began with the news that my mother, eighty years young, fell in love. Then once I swallowed that, she decided to marry. I accepted her decision. Then she announces that not only will she become Dominic's bride, she has decided to move to Italy. For good. It's been a series of whammies, I'll admit it. One beaut after another, I'll tell ya. But I survived the shock of each little bomb she dropped and put aside my doubts and misgivings and went with it. Don't I always go with the flow?"

Brava, Valentine
A Novel. Copyright © by Adriana Trigiani. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

Trigiani's sequel to Very Valentine is a sweet second act for shoemaker and designer Valentine Roncalli. Val takes over the New York family-run shoe business with feet-of-clay older brother, Alfred; falls for the dashing, older Gianluca in Italy; and takes a business risk in South America, where she unearths a dusty chapter of family history. There are plenty of picturesque globe-trotting adventures in Tuscany, Manhattan, and Buenos Aires, and, for artistic and independent Val, a grown-up commitment evolves. “There is no art without love. Only love can open someone up to the possibilities of living and creating art,” Val writes to the wary Gianluca. And the startling twist of family history finally challenges an old-fashioned, insular clan to join the modern world. But it's always the endearing, unnerving and rowdy Roncallis who steal the show. Look for a heartbreaking exit of one beloved character, and a cliffhanger breakup in this charming valentine to love, forgiveness, and family. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

The second novel in Trigiani's Valentine trilogy (after Very Valentine) brings back Valentine Roncalli and her argumentative but loving Italian American family. With her grandmother remarried and living in Italy, Valentine and her brother are now in charge of the Angelina Shoe Company. She's a strong businesswoman, but family and romantic relationships knock her off stride. The marriage problems she sees in her own family don't allow her to trust in a man or her own happiness. Her discovery of a family scandal that leads to Buenos Aires only stirs up more family troubles and romantic difficulties. And the loss of a beloved friend forces Valentine to question her future and look past tearful farewells for love and happiness. VERDICT Trigiani spoke to women's hearts with Big Stone Gap, and her Valentine series continues to do so. Brimming over with life, her latest will be essential reading for fans of humorous, touching family fiction. Trigiani's readers will be hard-pressed to wait a year for the final installment, Ciao, Valentine. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/09.]—Lesa Holstine, Glendale P.L., AZ

Library Journal

Lukewarm follow-up to Very Valentine (2009). In that novel, Valentine's 80-year-old grandmother Teodora surprised everyone by getting engaged to her secret boyfriend, a tanner she met on trips to Italy while buying supplies for her custom shoe business. Here, the whole family assembles in Italy for Teodora's wedding. It's a bittersweet event for Valentine. Not only is she losing her mentor and roommate (she and Gram shared an apartment above the Greenwich Village shop), now she has to run her decisions by supercilious brother Alfred, her most severe critic and new business partner (Gram named him CFO). A talented designer, Valentine has big plans to expand the business from couture wedding shoes to mass-produced daywear. Ex-fiance Bret is working with Alfred on the money end, while Valentine flies to Buenos Aires to reconnect with a long-lost cousin in the shoe-manufacturing business. Meanwhile, her gay friend Gabriel moves in to redecorate her apartment in fabulous Hollywood Regency style, and pious Alfred begins an extramarital affair with a representative from the Small Business Bureau. None of this compares in excitement to Valentine's long-distance romance with Teodora's new stepson. Hunky, 50ish Gianluca began wooing Valentine before the wedding; now he's turned up the heat and writes long romantic letters declaring his love. But Valentine is a modern woman, filled with the usual angst and uncertainty about how to manage love and career, so of course she pushes perfect Gianluca away. Trigiani's Italian-American family is appealing, but this middle installment of a planned trilogy delivers a very thin plot via an endless interior monologue by Valentine. A likable heroine doesn'tcompensate for a lackluster narrative.

Kirkus Reviews

"Trigiani’s endearing heroine, Valentine, struggles to balance her life as a shoe designer with her love life. A smart chick-lit read."

(Style Watch Edition) - People Magazine

“Trigiani’s endearing heroine, Valentine, struggles to balance her life as a shoe designer with her love life. A smart chick-lit read.

People

Valentine is one of Adriana Trigiani’s most winsome characters (yes, she even rivals the Big Stone Gap gang).... Brava, Valentine is laugh-out-loud funny...but it’s also an unexpectedly poignant examination of the power and pull of family, faith and love.

BookPage

A sweet and sexy love story.

Today Show

Trigiani’s endearing heroine, Valentine, struggles to balance her life as a shoe designer with her love life. A smart chick-lit read.

People (Style Watch Edition)