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Linda Cardillo
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Dancing on Sunday Afternoons Paperback – January 10, 2017

by Linda Cardillo (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 32 ratings
“I had two husbands.” The discovery of long-hidden love letters leads New York caterer Cara Serafini on a journey to understanding her formidable grandmother, Giulia Fiorillo. Born in a mountain village in southern Italy, the spirited Giulia arrives at the age of sixteen in a rough New York immigrant neighborhood at the beginning of the twentieth century, forced from the comforts and constrictions of her family by the fierce drive of her mother. In America, Giulia faces not only an inhospitable culture but also violence in the family and in the streets, shattering loss and a love that shapes her whole life.
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  1. Print length
    342 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    January 10, 2017
  4. Dimensions
    5 x 0.86 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1942209339
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1942209331
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bellastoria Press; Revised ed. edition (January 10, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 342 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1942209339
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1942209331
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.86 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 32 ratings

About the author

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Linda Cardillo

Linda Cardillo

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LINDA CARDILLO is an award-winning author of twelve works of historical fiction and romance. She writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss.

From the time she was in high school, Linda held in her heart the dream of writing the Great American Novel. But she was also brought up to know that she had to be “practical” and make a living. After graduating from college, she found a job as a secretary at a venerable Boston publishing house (barely passing the typing test). Within a year she had moved into an editorial position for college textbooks in the sciences and social sciences. It still wasn’t the Great American Novel, but she got to immerse herself in American intellectual and social history.

After earning her MBA from Harvard Business School—where she wrote comedy for the annual student musical and performed in a platinum blonde wig while seven months pregnant—she got divorced and gave birth. She then became circulation manager for the launch of Inc. magazine and got a crash course in magazine marketing. Unfortunately, she also crashed head-on into her boss and got fired a year after the magazine’s successful start.

Around this time she got an invitation to her tenth college reunion, signed up to attend and fell in love with a man she hadn’t seen since freshman year. On an excursion to a zoo, her son got carsick and threw up. This wonderful man calmly got him out of the car, cleaned him up and took him for a walk in the fresh air, and she knew she had a keeper.

Linda and the keeper moved to Germany for a few years with their children. While living in Europe, she received an unexpected gift of love letters that became the seeds for her first novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons.

Linda has been married for almost forty years to the keeper, a brilliant scientist and sailor, and is the mother of three children of whom she is enormously proud. She loves to cook and is happiest when the twelve chairs around her dining room table are filled with people enjoying her food. She speaks four languages, some better than others. She tries to play the piano every night—sometimes by herself and sometimes in an improvisational duet with her younger son. She does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, a practice she learned from her mother. From her mother she also absorbed a love of opera, especially those of Puccini and Verdi, whose music filled her home when she was a child. She once climbed Mt. Kenya and has very curly hair. Linda and the keeper live in Western Massachusetts.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Dancing on Sunday Afternoons—Maggie Award for Long Fiction

The Boat House Café—Goethe Award for 20th-Century Historical Fiction, First Place

The Uneven Road—BookLife Prize, Semi Finalist

Love That Moves the Sun—NYC Big Book Award, Winner in Historical Fiction; Foreword Indies Book of the Year, Finalist; Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction, Finalist

Visit Linda’s website at https://lindacardillo.com/; follow her on Facebook at Linda Cardillo, Author; or write to her at linda@lindacardillo.com.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
32 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book's storytelling compelling, with one review noting how it captures the early 20th century mood in Southern Italy. The romance receives positive feedback, with one customer describing it as a warm, well-written love story.

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5 customers mention "Storytelling"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the storytelling in the book, with one noting how it captures the early 20th century mood and another highlighting the vivid scenes in Southern Italy.

"...this is more than a love story, and very well written - vivid scenes in Southern Italy and Mount Vernon, NY at the turn of the century that really..." Read more

"...knows how to captivate her audience with characters that are so true to life you at once are imagining and feeling their pulse and breath...." Read more

"...The writing is smooth, tight and vivid. The author captures the early 20th century mood in both Italy and Mt. Vernon, New York and has obviously..." Read more

"...of actual letters from the author's grandparents made this story even more compelling. I highly recommend it!" Read more

4 customers mention "Romance"4 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the romance in the book, with one describing it as a well-written love story with plenty of passion between Giulia and Paolo.

"Plenty of passion for Giulia and Paolo, but this is more than a love story, and very well written - vivid scenes in Southern Italy and Mount Vernon,..." Read more

"This is a wonderful and warm well-written love story. I was so enchanted with it that I ordered one for two of my friends...." Read more

"...Same family. Different generations. Sweet, delightful. Can't put it down. Not your typical romance." Read more

"Love and Magic..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Erin L. Mccormack
    5.0 out of 5 stars a romance, yes - but much more
    Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2007
    Verified Purchase
    Plenty of passion for Giulia and Paolo, but this is more than a love story, and very well written - vivid scenes in Southern Italy and Mount Vernon, NY at the turn of the century that really come alive. Giulia's defiance in choosing who she will love and marry is part of her larger resistance to living a scripted life under the direction of her parents in Italy, and her brother Claudio in America. Drawing on the influences of both her earthy, healer grandmother and her elegant, ambitious mother, Giulia develops the strength to stand up for herself and live with the consequences of her decisions.

    The story is brutal at times; there is both domestic violence and the violence of a crowd, children are lost at birth, and loved ones perish from untreatable infections; economic hardship is a deciding reality. Through her life experiences, Giulia leaves a lasting legacy for her extended family, better even than the wealth and comfort that her sisters achieve: holding out for true love, the strength of enduring the unendurable, and best of all, the love letters that Paolo wrote to Giulia so many years ago.
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  • Ratmammy
    4.0 out of 5 stars My favorite romance so far this year
    Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2007
    DANCING ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS by Linda Cardillo

    March 16, 2007

    Amazon rating 4/5

    "Dancing on Sunday Afternoons is the first in the new Everlasting Love line from Harlequin. This historical romance is set mainly in the early 1900s, when thousands of immigrants arrived in America to start a new life.

    In the present day, Cara Serafini's ailing grandmother gives her a set of letters that tell the tale of Giulia Serafini's life with her first husband, Paolo. They take the reader from Italy - where Giulia grows up amidst a large Italian family, complete with domineering grandmother - to the heart of 1900s New York. The grandmother's love helps shape Giulia, a girl known to be rebellious and hard to control. Life changes dramatically when her parents decide to ship Giulia and her two sisters to America to live with her eldest brother Claudio, who defied his parents by moving to America to start a new life.

    Giulia was passionate and willful. In a time when girls were taught to be demure and shy, she was quite the opposite. In Italy she met boyfriends secretly at dances and alone in the fields. In America, she also caught the eye of several young men. Roberto was one, and another was Paolo, Claudio's business partner and good friend. It is their romance and great love that is chronicled in the letters that Giulia presents to her granddaughter Cara - the bulk of the novel centers on Giulia." - Complete review at BookLoons - M. Lofton

    This was such a wonderful romance! So far it's been my favorite book in this new series of books by Harlequin. I have a feeling none of the successive books are going to match in quality and depth as this one. It has an "epic" feel to it, telling the tale of Giulia Serafini, from her early years in Italy and then her new life in America. Those who love historical romances will surely love DANCING ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. Tissues will be needed.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Donna C
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book. Amazing story
    Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    What a beautiful story about the authors family. I read this in 2 days. Couldn t put it down. As an Italian American woman, it’s heartbreaking to read about the struggles my grandparents went through to be an American. They were considered the lowest class of citizens. But they flourished and were better people for it. They made sure my parents and aunts and uncles knew English first and foremost and barely taught them Italian. Read this book. You won’t be disappointed.
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  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars warm family drama
    Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2007
    Guilia D'Orazio thinks back over her life especially her two husbands. The presence of her second spouse Salvatore who died over three decades ago is everywhere in her home and her garden, her first husband Paolo left nothing not even a photo. Whereas Salvatore even when he was dying took simple pleasure with his offspring and his first granddaughter Cara Serrafini, Paolo had no children. Though she loved the warm comforting Salvatore, Guilia thinks of Paolo while lying in her bed that she shared with her second husband.

    When the family matriarch breaks her hip, her married granddaughter Cara, a Manhattan based caterer, who speaks fluent Italian, comes from America to Italy to help her paternal nana heal though that means leaving her husband and kids behind in Jersey. In Avellino, Italy Guilia shares with Cara the only legacy that Paolo left her, a cigar box filled with letters of love and troubles that remind the younger member of her own life for Nana remembers how her beloved Paolo took her DANCING ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS in New York that for the enchanting moment washed away their woes.

    This is a warm family drama whose prime characters (Nana and her granddaughter) and the support cast as seen through the eyes of the lead females make for a delightful poignant tale. The story line focuses on the letters, which gives it a sense of historical perspective, but also remains anchored in the present as Cara cares for her beloved nana while paralleling her relationship to that of her grandmother. Readers will enjoy Linda Cardillo's fine novel of how love can come in so many different ways.

    Harriet Klausner
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  • Happy Mainer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Warm and wonderful
    Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    This is a wonderful and warm well-written love story. I was so enchanted with it that I ordered one for two of my friends. And in response to one of the reviewers who had indicated that Paolo, the first husband, did not have children, he certainly did: a girl and a boy? Highly recommend it.
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  • Donna Diamond
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mystical
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    This author knows how to captivate her audience with characters that are so true to life you at once are imagining and feeling their pulse and breath. This goes beyond romance for romance sake as it revolves around family culture and traditions with an historical background. One is being seduced and beckoned to view life in early 1900s with a prominent family in Italy then immigrating to America. Hard to put down.
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