NO STEADY JOB FOR PAPA

by Marion Benasutti ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 3, 1966

This is billed as a novel but reads like autobiography removed only by the fact that the heroine is named Rosemary. It is the story of an Italian immigrant couple (Papa came over in 1892, went back to marry and bring Mama) with American-born children living first in a mining town in Pennsylvania, later in a back street in Philadelphia, at last (Mama's triumph) in the more prosperous and respectable German-town. It tells of Rosemary's child-and-girlhood in a family where Papa had no steady job (except for the War, when he worked in the Navy yard), but found a cycle of working while the weather was fine and the sun shone through his own ""private enterprise"" mainly building steps, subsiding into the household come winter. Rosemary took jobs as soon as she could, taking care of old Mrs. Pierce until she died, working in the knitting mills until she fainted, finally writing and going to business college. The social climate of the Back Street is well done (the abrasive relations with the Irish Laceys did not end with Trina's elopement with Larry Lacey), as is the ambience within the household, dominated by Rosemary's determined, unlettered and unshod mother. It is a familiar story of striving in the American tradition, faithfully transmitted without any heightened fictional sensibility in evidence.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Vanguard

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION