The End-Salvatore Scibona

The End
Salvatore Scibona
Riverhead, Oct 2009, $16.00
ISBN: 9781594484056

In 1953 in the Italian neighbored Elephant Park in Ohio, the residents enjoy the annual August Feast of the Assumption. “Unwifed" and “Un-children” baker Rocco cannot accept his family left him; in fact he rejects the military informing him his son died in action in Korea. He expects every one of them to come home shortly.

The workaholic jeweler with nothing else in his life, the bone weary seamstress, the runaway teen, and the acrimonies elderly abortion doctor attend the Feast. They are just as lost as the baker is as they cannot accept desertion although each in some way has been affected by dissimilation. In fact in a macabre way they have each other as they and others unite when a few blacks try to enjoy the festivities but are not just unwelcome but hostilities turn violent with The End justifying the means.

This not a simple linear historical tale that goes from one point to the next until the end is reached; instead the story line is convoluted and difficult to follow, but once the reader adapts, he or she will appreciate a deep look into the window of the souls. A sort of Eleanor Rigby starring in the Outcast of Poker Flats; The End is a profound tale of what makes a community as the coming together is not necessarily positive. Not for everyone, Salvatore Scibona provides to his audience a resonating character study in which each of the key cast members find their respective past converge on a hot humid August 15 1953, a day of infamy for the lost residents of Elephant Park

Harriet Klausner