Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In an emotionally extravagant memoir that favors stream of consciousness over structure, Alaya (Gaetano Federici: The Artist as Historian), a literature and cultural history professor at Ramapo College in N.J., recounts her longstanding, clandestine relationship with a Roman Catholic priest. She brings to life her Italian-American upbringing in a large extended family, capturing the complexities of her relationship with a father who, hoping to protect her sexual innocence, restricted her freedom. Shortly after leaving college, she found both love and freedom in Perugia, Italy, where she was living on a Fulbright scholarship and met Father Harry Browne, a 40-year-old Irish-American priest. Browne reciprocated her feelings, and their love affair blossomed when they returned to New York and became deeply involved in tenant organizing on the Upper West Side. When Alaya became pregnant, she fled to Italy to have her baby, so as not to jeopardize her lover's position in the church. She later relocated to New Jersey and, through the births of two more children, kept their father's identity a secret while Browne's ongoing political activism burnished his reputation as a charismatic radical priest. In 1970, ill from the demands of single motherhood, Alaya finally told Browne either to live openly with her or to leave permanently. He chose to live with her, but remained a priest until his death from leukemia 10 years later. Alaya squarely lays the blame for her lover's divided loyalties at the feet of a regressive church. She is less convincing, however, in her protestations that their domestic situation allowed her the freedom to be herself. B&W photos. Author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
At 22 years of age, in a cafe in Italy, Alaya met fellow Fulbright recipient Harry Browne, 16 years her senior. Raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Browne was a social activist, a historian--and a Catholic priest. Their relationship endured for over 20 years, producing three children and seemingly sustaining both extraordinary parties quite well. Not a martyr to love, Alaya was able to hold onto independence and self-possession while experiencing a profoundly passionate attachment to a fascinating human being. Through the bonding of social activism, Browne and Alaya weathered many civil rights storms, the 1960s antiwar movement, and a grass-roots campaign against a New York real estate grab. Browne championed the poor and fought to better their housing situation; Alaya wrote scholarly articles on 19th-century literature. The relationship's secrecy (it was hidden "under the rose"), its continual trials and stress, and the ousting of Browne as priest when it was discovered pull the reader along for the ride with elegiac style. For women's studies, religious history, and even general collections.--Kay Meredith Dusheck, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Beneath its "scandalous" surface, Flavia Alaya's life story goes to the heart of women's struggles for independence, self-definition, and sexual agency. At 22, Alaya embarked on a love affair with Father Harry Browne, a relationship that violated the deepest taboos of her Catholic upbringing. Their relationship carried on in secrecy through the birth of three children. The author is founding director of the School of Intercultural Studies at Ramapo College. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
A torrid tale of illicit love between an Italian-American woman and an Irish-American Roman Catholic priest that lasted for 20 years and produced three children. Alaya is no ordinary Italian-American; with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, she is a Victorian scholar and an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The priest was no ordinary priest, but the late Father Harry Browne, a nationally known New York City housing activist in whose rectory bedroom the FBI found and arrested the famous anti–Vietnam War prelate Philip Berrigan. It's Alaya who puts the emphasis on her Italian heritage, and it was in Italy that she and her soon-to-be-lover met, while both were on scholarly grants. She was an inexperienced 21-year-old; he was 16 years her senior and celibate nearly that long. The physical passion that brought them together kept them together in secret nightly rendezvous and public daytime encounters organizing strategy to preserve low-income housing in their New York City neighborhood. Alaya was satisfied to enjoy both love and independence, even after the children began to come and her parents turned away from her. It was the burden of three children and a stressful career plus Harry's increasingly time-consuming involvement in good works that caused her to demand—and him to agree—that he come home. They lived together as man and wife for almost a decade, until Harry died of leukemia in 1980. Alaya has since remarried twice, reconciled with her father and learned his shameful secret, and struggled to have this memoir published. Her years with Harry are richly interlarded with stories of her growing up in a close and often temperamental Italian-Americanfamily, reflecting a preference for the drama and passion of opera; the chapters in the book are named for Italian operas. In this memoir, as in opera, it's the powerful feeling, not the melodramatic plot, that will capture the reader. (b&w photos)
