Description
The Lesser Madonnas
11 short stories by A. Rooney
ISBN: 978-1-956440-87-4 paperback $20.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-88-1 ebook $9.99
160 pp.
June 18, 2024
The Lesser Madonnas is a linked collection of short stories about working class and immigrant life in Denver, Colorado. These stories highlight the real conflicts people have with identity and just getting by in a society that was not built specifically for them. The strength of this collection is the characters, who are all fully developed. The stories showcase the author’s ability to empathize and occupy the spaces of many different kinds of people without being insensitive. It avoids politicizing these conflicts and instead focuses on the human side of how to survive within a major American city amidst a struggling economy and the challenges of daily life. These stories demonstrate a real range of conflicts and lifestyles, and the author handles all of them equally with care.
Praise for The Lesser Madonnas: Linked stories by A. Rooney:
Rooney paints a well-crafted portrait of eleven women’s inner lives and motivations as they encounter life and each other at the Bel-Care Motel. He leads us on a journey of thwarted idealism and ever-shifting identities as the women’s everyday experiences and hopes for the future are both real and complicated and lead us to the truth that we are all foreigners here facing the unknown, and we all have the ability to self-destruct.
—Francine Rodriguez, author of A Woman’s Story
The strength of this collection is its characters, who are all fully developed. It showcases the author’s ability to empathize with and occupy the spaces of many different kinds of people. Never is Rooney insensitive or political in these stories, instead, focusing on the human side of survival within a major American city amidst a struggling economy and the everyday struggles of life. These stories demonstrate a real range of conflicts and lifestyles, and the author handles all of them with equal care.
—Mike Hilbig, author of Judgment Day & Other White Lies
In The Lesser Madonnas, Rooney has let us into the lives of eleven women connected by more than the motel they frequent: women who suffer. As Mrs. Brown says in her story, “Women have had to suffer for centuries, maybe since the beginning.” Nisha from India follows the life of a Bollywood actress in “The Madhuris of Denver,” and later is filled with regret: “I went on to become Nisha Banerjee, of the Bel-Care motel of Denver, with no children and a Bengali husband with crooked teeth.”
We know these women, we see them tending bar, styling hair, and cleaning the motel rooms; women who struggle day to day with what life throws at them; victims, but overcomers.
—Traci Hales, Author and Radio Show Host
Rooney (we call him Andy) taught writing at Jindal Global University in Sonipat, India, and now lives in Denver, Colorado. His novel, The Autobiography of Francis N. Stein: The Last Promethean, was published in 2019 by Madville Publishing. He has published a collection of stories, The Colorado Motet (Ghost Road Press) and a novella, Fall of the Rock Dove (Main Street Rag). His stories and poems have appeared in journals, magazines, and websites all over the world.
Also by A. Rooney, The Autobiography of Francis N. Stein: The Last Promethean
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