Critical Praise

"Louisa Ermelino is America's counterpart to Fellini and DeSica. She practices storytelling at its best. Lower Manhattan's Italian-American community has never been portrayed with more humor and love than in The Black Madonna."

——Vincent Patrick, author of The Pope of Greenwich Village

"Moving gracefully across decades and continents, The Black Madonna recounts marvelous tales of love, friendship, jealousy, and magic. With apparent effortlessness, Louisa Ermelino creates a world full of larger-than-life characters that is at once both ordinary and miraculous."

——Tom Perrotta, author of Joe College and Election

"An endearing portrayal of working-class Italian-American women, their sons, their families, their lives, their loves, and their dreams in New York's Little Italy. Ermelino writes with sensitivity and compassion and a signature earthy charm."

——Louise DeSalvo, author of Adultery

"The Black Madonna is an exquisite read. Teresa, Antoinette, and Magdalena, what a trio! These are not ladies who lunch, these are ladies that sit on tenement stoops, but they are just as lethal. The scenes at the Bronx hospital and in Italy are comically priceless. As has been said, Italiani, brava gente, but it is clear from these pages that "la femmina" rule the roost."

——Edwin Torres, author of Q&A and Carlito's Way

"The Black Madonna is a big-hearted, wise, and wonderfully observed novel about mothers and sons. Louisa Ermelino gives the reader all the life and glorious color of her characters and of New York's Little Italy."

——Susan Isaacs, author of Almost Paradise and Shining Through

"Bad boys and good mothers -- or good boys and bad mothers? In The Black Madonna, Louisa Ermelino shows us three exasperating but lovable Italian mamas, and their equally exasperating but lovable sons. It's a festa worthy of the best held on Spring Street!"

——Rita Ciresi, author of Sometimes I Dream in Italian

"Wise, witty, warm -- all the expected things, but tough too, and literary. Ermelino is a first-division writer -- graceful and witty in her use of language, loyal to the truth, passionate and proud. If Scorsese was a woman and a novelist, one would expect no less from him."

——Fay Weldon, author of Affliction and A Hard Time to Be a Father

"An Italian version of The Joy Luck Club."

——People

"Refreshing… What makes this book good is the author's truth of observation, her ear for speech and her humor, not to mention an ability to tell a sprawling story in a few words."

——The San Francisco Chronicle

"Ermelino's frisky, old-fashioned storytelling possesses timeless appeal."

——Entertainment Weekly

"A zesty debut… the warmth and humor of this slice-of-lives storytelling are seductive. This engaging first novel has TV sitcom potential."

——Publishers Weekly

"The Black Madonna is fast-paced and delightful, one of those books you can't put down until you've devoured every last word."

——The New York Post