The Romantist

About the Book

It is 1900, a Swedish farm girl of Minnesota desolated by the family's death during a cruel winter, is in suicidal despair. While recovering, she reads the novels of Francis Marion Crawford, the popular romancer of the day who lives sumptuously in a beautiful villa at Sorrento. The romances revive her will to live, to live, for each novel is a love potion driving her to go to Italy, to a love for the novelist which has entranced her. The novels like love potions lead to a romantic death.

Francis Marion Crawford from birth was destined for a romantic life, and death in the arms of his young inamorata, Hedwige, Both sailing into the fury of a scirocco. The after talk is that Hedwige was a siren from America who lured Crawford into an ecstatic ending for both. Not quite; some say they haunt the lonely tower off the coast of Calabria where the romancer write his novels. They are seen evenings of a perfumed sea.

About the Author

Frank J. Palescandolo was born in New York City, attended public schools, is a graduate of Columbia College and Fordham School of Social Work. US Army Intelligence Director of the Youth Bureaus of the District Attorney’s Offices of the City of New York. Consultant to the US Dept. of Justice on juvenile crime, Italian reader for Crown Books. Restaurateur.