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  PRAISE FOR HOW FIRES END

  “Beautiful, mesmerizing, consoling, and under immaculate control, Marco Rafalà’s How Fires End is a powerful novel about the religion we create for ourselves as we face that which perhaps even God has not imagined for humanity.”

  —Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

  “Marco Rafalà ignites all kinds of fires in this brightly burning novel fueled by old vendettas and unresolved resentments. A tremendous, well-crafted debut.”

  —Idra Novey, award-winning author of Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear

  “How Fires End is a raised fist of a novel, one filled with men’s brutal tenderness and tender brutality. It is both a subtle and powerful indictment of the silences between generations and a poignant testament to the bond between sons and fathers of all kinds. A blazing debut by an important new Italian American voice.”

  —Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men

  “How Fires End explores the complicated bind of family, attempting to answer the age-old question of where family history ends and the self begins. This is a beautiful meditation on time, memory, and consequences.”

  —Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman

  “What happens when the fires we nurture with hate die? How Fires End is a breathtaking multigenerational story of fathers and sons who yearn for warmth amid the ashes of their own secrets and lies. Generous, bold, epic, Marco Rafalà’s novel is a triumph.”

  —Brando Skyhorse, award-winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park and Take This Man: A Memoir

  “How Fires End struck me at my core. Part mourning, part witness, this is a story that yearns to make peace with the endless, brutal wounds of war. It will haunt me with an unanswerable question: How do we heal from the pain of the unspoken when a family’s secrets are carried—across seas and generations—out of love and protection?”

  —Natalia Sylvester, author of Chasing the Sun and Everyone Knows You Go Home

  “How Fires End commences with such authority and grace that it hardly seems the work of a debut novelist. There is a great weight in the tenderness and simplicity of the voice of the narrators. It has gravitas without any sacrifice of beauty.”

  —Victoria Redel, author of Before Everything and LA Times Best Book of the Year Loverboy

  “This is a wondrous novel that burns with secret histories, arcing across space and time, voiced by characters who speak their separate truths with resilience and dignity. A gorgeous debut.”

  —M. Dressler, author of The Deadwood Beetle and The Last to See Me

  “What happens when faith blinds us to our own humanity? How Fires End is part war story and aftermath, part mythology, a lamentation shot through with melancholy and pathos. Rafalà writes of the mothers and fathers and sons and daughters of Melilli, Sicily, with such care and tenderness that to read it was like listening to the breathing out and collapse of an accordion—history folding over onto itself, sighing out a mournful story on notes of stone and stars. We yearn with David, grieve with Salvatore, shoulder the yoke of history with Vincenzo, console and heal with Nella as each tells a story of wars waged, battles lost, and secrets kept.”

  —Susan Bernhard, author of Winter Loon

  “This multilayered, astonishing novel takes you into the heart of a dark family legacy and twists you up with emotion on every page. How Fires End is beautifully written and startling in its revelations. I can’t stop thinking about this heartbreaking book.”

  —Crystal King, author of Feast of Sorrow and The Chef’s Secret

  “Marco Rafalà’s How Fires End is a devastating and gorgeously conceived novel of tragedy and redemption spanning generations and continents. The past is never the past for the Vassallo family; it stalks and curses their lives, first in Sicily and then decades later in America. Heartbreaking and beautifully wrought, Rafalà’s haunting debut is a must-read exploration of the perils of personal and political histories and how we try to overcome them.”

  —Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora

  “A rich and unforgettable novel about heritage and loss, about our futures and our roots. How Fires End is intense and absorbing—a virtuoso performance by Marco Rafalà.”

  —Kristopher Jansma, author of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards and Why We Came to the City

  “A haunting debut novel that shows us how the dark secrets of the old country can never be repressed. This is a poignant and powerful immigrants’ tale of reckoning, tragedy, and the search for redemption in a Sicilian family that learns it can never shed the claws of its past, even in this new American life.”

  —Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, author of Sarong Party Girls

  “Marco Rafalà speaks to the Sicilian American experience as no other since his fellow of the New School, Mario Puzo. He writes with care, wisdom, and compassion. Sharing in his novel is sharing in the better part of living.”

  —John Reed, author of A Still Small Voice and Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Marco Rafalà

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Little A, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Little A are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542042970 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1542042976 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781542042994 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1542042992 (paperback)

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Derek Thornton

  Cover illustrated by Tran Nguyen

  First edition

  For the people of Melilli, Sicily, and for my father, the best of them.

  For my mother, who made sure I always had books in my life.

  And for Ziu Sal—your absence haunts us still.

  CONTENTS

  NELLA

  PROLOGUE

  DAVID

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  SALVATORE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  VINCENZO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7


  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  NELLA

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NELLA

  PROLOGUE

  “I had three brothers,” she began, “but now—” Nella took a deep breath, held it in, let it out slow. “Now I am the last Vassallo. After me, there will be no more. But our families, yours and mine, they were there in the beginning with the statue.”

  She paused to sip her hot cocoa. The boy watched her, hungry for more. He didn’t move, not even to brush the curls of unkempt dark hair from his eyes. Her face wrinkled into a smile and she set the cup down, still holding it with both hands. She continued, not stopping until the cup had long grown cold.

  “My father told my brothers and me the story of how the statue of Saint Sebastian came to the village of Melilli, the village we once called home. Like so many stories, this one started with danger. A ship was caught in a furious storm and ran aground in Megara Bay. The hull cracked open on the rocks, and the waves pushed our saint ashore. All the sailors survived. They thanked their cargo for their lives, but none of these men could lift the statue to carry it off. Word spread, first among the shepherds, then to the local villages and cities, until news reached the bishop of Syracuse. In three days, he came with clergy and a crew of men to claim the saint. Again the saint was too heavy to lift. From all over the province, people gathered on the beach, waiting their turn to try to break the spell and lift the statue. Some of the men built a fire. Some of the women cooked. At night they prayed, and in the day their prayers failed them.

  “When the procession from Melilli arrived, our priest claimed the statue, saying, ‘Since the making of the world, Saint Sebastian has been painted here on the grotto wall in our village, here before even Sebastian himself was born. This is Melilli, the martyr Sebastian, tied to a tree and porcupined with Roman arrows.’ Then our men raised the statue on a wooden pallet and placed the poles upon their shoulders, and a great cheer went up among them as all the clergy prayed and made the sign of the cross. ‘E chiamamulu paisanu,’ they shouted. ‘Prima Diu e Sammastianu.’ He is one of our own. First God, and then Saint Sebastian. Another cheer seized the men, and they carried the saint home, our ancestors, a Vassallo and a Morello, among the bearers.

  “Our families held hands and sang together bringing their patron saint home to Melilli. In the piazza, on the ridge overlooking the bay, their knees buckled. The men cried out. A force had suddenly burdened them with a weight they could no longer carry. The priest kissed the wooden crucifix around his neck and said, ‘No man can shoulder the might of God.’ So they left the statue there and built a church around it. This was May 1414.

  “As children, my brothers and I loved that story. As children, we believed-as everyone believed in those days-that Saint Sebastian would protect the people of Melilli forever. When earthquakes destroyed much of our village, it was by his glory our families lived to marvel-the statue unharmed among the ruins. Etna erupted. We prayed to him, and our homes were spared. He saw us through all the wars and years of unrest and revolt in our history.

  “‘Saint Sebastian always keeps us safe. He will always keep us safe.’ My father said these words as we hid in the cave, the war raging just outside. Gunfire cracked the air. Bombs whistled as they fell from the sky. Beneath our feet the ground trembled. The cave shook like it might come down on top of us any minute. In the back, our mother prayed her rosary before the ancient painting of the saint on the cave wall. She wanted me, her only daughter, by her side. But I wanted to work with my father and brothers. We hulled a bushel basket of almonds, the only food left to eat. All around us, Germans and Allies fought. Such noise as you would never imagine possible.”

  DAVID

  1

  My father and I sat on metal folding chairs at a card table in our kitchen, peeling the blackened and blistered skin from roasted bell peppers. Ashen flakes stuck to our fingers. It was a Friday evening in March 1986, in Middletown, Connecticut. The sunset hung framed in the bay windows over the sink, and the kitchen took on an orange glow. My father worked the pepper in his hands as a sculptor works sandpaper on stone, smoothing the coarse surface. I tried to ease off the burnt skin the way he did, but the red pepper was slimy in my clumsy hands. I ripped the flesh open, making a mess of juice and seeds on the table, like always.

  “Easy,” my father said. He wiped his fingers clean with a damp towel on his lap.

  “I’m trying,” I said.

  “Beh, you try. You try but you no learn.” He took the pepper from me and finished peeling it. His fingers moved with a slow and delicate purpose, a memory kept in the muscles of his wrists and palms. He was still angry with me for what happened—for my lie—and what it made him remember.

  The lie I’d told my father wasn’t about whether I made confession at Saint Sebastian Church. It wasn’t about how I’d gotten a fat lip at Woodrow Wilson Middle School—I always lied about how I got those. It wasn’t even about the fibs I told the priest when I did finally confess. No, this was a real lie with real consequences. I told my father I was going to the library Friday after school. But that wasn’t where I went. This was how I ended up in yet another fight with Tony Morello—a fight my father finally witnessed. A fight that changed everything.

  Tony Morello was big for a thirteen-year-old, already a mountain. He lived in a house under the Arrigoni Bridge, and his father beat him. All the kids at school suspected, but no one talked about it. The adults, too. They kept quiet because it wasn’t their business. But Tony was my business and I was his—for the longest time, he was my nemesis, and I didn’t know why. If my life had been a fairy tale, then Tony Morello would have been the troll.

  He wandered out from under his bridge onto a derelict side street two blocks from the library—between me and where I was supposed to be. Underdressed for winter in his zipped-up wannabe “Thriller” jacket, he lurked in the red-brick shadows of an old carriage factory. He’d written his name in the dirt of the one unbroken window, a dog peeing to mark his territory.

  I pulled buzzing headphones down around my neck. There was no escaping him, no winning against him. Not even sunlight would have helped me turn this troll into stone. Mouthing off made it easier to stomach. “Just learned how to spell your name?”

  Tony shoved me down and we tumbled through a dirty snowbank. His breath reeked of corn chips. He sat on my back, pushed my face into dirty snow, black with soot. When my father came barreling at us from around the corner, he moved like a gnarled old tree uprooted from the soil by gale and gravity. He moved fast, a man who knew the speed of danger.

  “Get off my son!” he bellowed as he pulled Tony off me.

  A truck horn sounded, low and strangled, and a red Chevy pickup with white side panels crawled to a stop in the street. Tony’s father, Rocco, hunched in the driver’s seat, his elbow out the window. Rocco and my father: two men out searching for lost sons. “Antonio,” Rocco yelled. “Get the hell over here.”

  My father chased after Tony but froze in the truck’s headlights when I called out for him to stop. The beams lit up the underside of his face, framed in the earflaps of his black fur trooper hat, and threw his eyes into shadow. He dented the hood with his fist.

  When Tony climbed into the cab through the passenger door, Rocco shouted at him. “What did I say?” He smacked the back of Tony’s head, sending his forehead into the dashboard. “You stay away from that family. They’re no g
ood.” Then he leaned out the window and spat on the pavement. “Put your hands on my boy again and not even that Fascist you hide behind can protect you.”

  “Vaffanculo,” my father cursed. He was a man used to curses. He slapped his palm against his bicep, arm raised with a fist and bent at the elbow. He stood planted in the road, forcing Rocco to drive around him. My father watched the taillights go around the corner. An oncoming car honked him to the curb. He waved the driver away, his arm the swishing tail of a donkey swatting a fly off its rump.

  “What happened?” my father asked me. His Roman nose chapped red from waiting in the cold for me. “I looked for you,” he said. “Where were you?” He held my chin, turned my face left and then right. He inspected the bruises the way he inspected pears at the grocery store. He made that same face, too, as he rejected the fruit, like he’d just smelled a fart.

  “I hate him.” My voice cracked, and I hated that even more.

  “That boy, he is a scimunitu like his father. Next time you fight back.” My father slapped snow from my shoulders and backside.

  “I tried,” I said. But I hadn’t, not really. Not even close.

  He touched the headphones dangling around my neck. “Where did you get this?”

  I jerked away and fumbled reconnecting the headphone cord to the Walkman. “Can we just go?”

  My father grabbed the Walkman and shook it in my face, and I flinched. “If you’d been at the library maybe that boy wouldn’t have bothered you. See what happens when you’re not where you’re supposed to be?”

  But he was wrong. I had been where I needed to be. I was with my new friend, Sam—the one good thing that came of that troll Tony. Monday had been Sam’s first day at Woodrow Wilson, already two months into the new year. Lost on his way to homeroom, he stumbled smack into Tony’s massive frame, so Tony sent Sam sailing into me—and me, into a wall of lockers. Thus, the first fat lip of that week.

  I picked up Sam’s blue Trapper Keeper, the flap decked out in the raccoon eyes of a Siouxsie and the Banshees sticker. When I asked him who they were, he grinned and bobbed up and down on the toes of his sneakers, high-top Converse All Stars. Black, like mine. “Are you kidding?” he asked. By Friday, Sam had invited me to his house to listen to records. I knew my father wouldn’t let me go to a stranger’s house, but I needed a friend, even just one. So I told my father I’d be studying at Russell Library instead.