Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (44 page)

Too poor and too plain to marry, and unwilling to burden what family she has left, twenty-year-old Irma Vitale sees no choice but to flee her Italian mountain village. Risking rough passage across the Atlantic and the dangers facing a single woman in an unfamiliar land, Irma boldly pursues a new life sewing dresses for gentlewomen.

Swept up in the crowded streets of nineteenth-century America, Irma finds not only workshop servitude and miserable wages, but also seeds of friendship in the raw immigrant quarters. When her determination to find a place for herself leads at last to a Chicago shop, Irma blossoms under the guidance of an austere Alsatian dressmaker, sewing fabrics and patterns more beautiful than she’d ever imagined. Then tragedy strikes and her tenuous peace is shattered. From the rubble, and in the face of human cruelty and kindness, suffering and hope, Irma prevails, discovering a talent she’d never imagined and an unlikely family patched together by the common threads that unite us all.

PRAISE FOR

Pamela Schoenewaldt

“A beautifully rendered and poignant family drama that teems with the life of early twentieth-century America. . . . Schoenewaldt has given us a whole universe between the covers of this book.”

—DANA SACHS,

author of
The Secret of the Nightingale Palace
on
Swimming in the Moon

“Lush with historical detail. . . . Pamela Schoenewaldt delivers another novel full of richly realized characters who transport us to the immigrant neighborhoods of early twentieth-century America.”

—JESSICA BROCKMOLE,

author of
Letters from Skye
on
Swimming in the Moon

“What’s at the heart of this beautiful book is not the romance between Lucia and Henryk . . . or even Lucia’s passion for social justice and her work for the unions; it’s the relationship between mother and daughter.”

—PATRICIA HARMAN,

author of
The Midwife of Hope River
on
Swimming in the Moon

“As a reader and frequent reviewer I long for this kind of lovely prose. A cut above.”

—CAROLLY ERICKSON,

author of
The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette
on
When We Were Strangers

“Readable and engaging. . . . This is a story that is not finished simply because the reader has reached the last page—a memorable novel.”

—NANCY E. TURNER,

author of
These Is My Words
on
When We Were Strangers

“Schoenewaldt’s heartbreaking debut is the late 19th century immigrant coming-of-age story of poor, plain Irma Vitale. . . . Irma’s adventures and redeeming evolution make this a serious book club contender.”

—
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY,

on
When We Were Strangers

Also by Pamela Schoenewaldt

When We Were Strangers

Credits

Cover design by Emin Mancheril

Cover photographs: background © by Grietpearl/Shutterstock Images; cameo © by plainpicture/Readymade-Images

Author photograph by Kelly Norrell

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

SWIMMING IN THE MOON
. Copyright © 2013 by Pamela Schoenewaldt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-220223-9

EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062202246

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