G.S.’s Comments (group member since Feb 24, 2019)

G.S.’s comments from the G.N.A. Publishing░N░e░w░ ░A░u░t░h░o░r░s░ group.

Grasshopper wrote: "Lovely excerpt GS. You have transported us to a beautiful world. A flying Madonna, miracles and then, boom! A proxy marriage with the brother!
Intriguing...Marked as {To be read}"

That's great if I've intrigued you with a few paragraphs.

G.S. wrote: "This is a great place to post. This is the opening of my novel, Sweet Bitter Cane It's about a woman who after WWI travels from Italy to Australia to find a better life.

CHAPTER O..."
I liked the idea of the flying Madonna for a long while - but was she singing Like A Virgin? So happy you liked the excerpt.

Sweet Bitter Cane was released this week. Sweet Bitter Cane

One woman. Two men. A war.

Twenty-year-old Amelia marries Italo, a man she’s never met. To escape an Italy reeling from the Great War, she sails to him in Far North Queensland to farm sugarcane. But before she meets her husband, she’s thrown into the path of Fergus, a man who’ll mark the rest of her life.

Faced with a lack of English and hostility from established cane growers, caught between warring unions and fascists, Amelia’s steady hand grows Italo’s business to great success, only for old grudges to break into new revenge. She is tested by forces she couldn’t foresee and must face her greatest challenge: learning to live again.

Sweeping in its outlook, Sweet Bitter Cane is a family saga but also an untold story of migrant women – intelligent, courageous and enduring women who were the backbone of the sugarcane industry and who deserve to be remembered.

This is a great place to post. This is the opening of my novel, Sweet Bitter Cane It's about a woman who after WWI travels from Italy to Australia to find a better life.

CHAPTER ONE
The Madonna flew from Jerusalem. Like a gyre she rose, wing-less, from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, passing over the sea, over Crete and Sicily, between Capri and Vesuvius, close to the sun, amongst the starlings and swifts and the shrieking sea-birds. She swept along the coast of conquered pasts, above the dusty aqueducts, the chipped and crumbling buildings, olive groves and grain fields and winter-gnarled vineyards, never once losing her way, full of grace.

She glided over the cobblestones of Tovo di Sant’Agata in far northern Italy, past the stirring baker and the sleeping cob-bler, through the village square, over the water well and barking dogs and prowling cats and shivering rats. She touched down, crimson and sapphire robes fluttering, her lips and cheeks a healthy rose, at the end of Amelia Durante’s bed.

For the first time in many years, this vision returned to Ame-lia uncourted. While staring at the Madonna to the side of the altar in the parish church, blood pulsed the statue’s white marble to flesh, her lips alive, her weeping robes the same deep colours. The questions came again to Amelia: What did this vision mean? That she was blessed? That she would travel? Or that she would never leave the village? The Madonna cared for her? What else could it mean? The Madonna beckoned her.

Taken over, she extended her right hand, splayed her fingers. They hung in midair, a featherless wing. The air, heavy with frankincense, scorched her eyes. Amelia gasped, snatched back her hand and raised her left. What kind of fool gave the wrong hand? She swallowed her doubts and watched the gold ring slip over her knuckle. How innocent it looked, this self-joined circle, and what power it held. Even through the white film of her veil it shone, sun-gold.
The priest began. ‘Confírma hoc, Deus, quod operátus es in nobis.’
With her free hand, she rotated the ring, just a single turn, this key to freedom.
‘A templo sancto tuo, quod est in Jerúsalem,’ the small con-gregation responded.
Amelia looked beyond the priest to the white-lace altar and the risen god above. She inhaled the incense.
‘Et ne nos indúcas in tentatiónem.’
‘Sed líbera nos a malo,’ she said.
Had she made the right choice? So much was still to be re-solved.
‘You may kiss the bride.’

Giuseppe turned to her. So strange to see him in a suit, with a tie and white shirt. With infinite care, he gathered the bottom of her veil as if raising the curtain on a theatre performance. His eyes didn’t leave hers. He leaned forward, moving his mouth towards her lips. She pressed up on her toes, as far above her mere 150 centimetres as she could muster, but turned so his lips touched her cheek, then the other. It seemed natural to kiss her brother like this. He was just her proxy groom.

Grasshopper wrote: "Welcome Greg. That is an amazing skill, to read on the exercise machine! Our main protagonist in this month's Booker selection Milkman, reads while jogging too. You are in the right..."

It's one of the few things that makes exercise bearable. Do you like Milkman?

Name: Greg

Author/ Reader: both sides, now

Favourite Book: Possession: A Romance.

Favourite time to read: On the exercise machine

Favourite Food: Italian

Favourite Drink: Negroni