DONNA NUCCI
What do we inherit, and what can we finally lay down?
"He removed his cross and came to me unburdened. We did not speak. It would have been unbearable." Luigia 1880
DONNA NUCCI
THE PENNY
In Query for an Agent in 2026
If you would like to know more about the query process and how
I picked agents to query email me at donna@donnanucci.com
Three full manuscript requests
from major agents as of March 2026 - my top choices!
Thank you to my editor
Susanna Daniel for your unwavering commitment
to this project and honest feedback.
I highly recommend Susanna to every author.
Seven generations. Seven women. One all-consuming, secret love
that starts a saga stretching from 1850s Italy to post-9/11 America.
A lineage of midwives, nurses and visionaries inherit a single
copper penny and the secrets, desires, and silences carried by every woman
before them until one daughter uncovers a truth powerful enough to set them all free.
What do we owe the women who came before us?
What stories live in our blood, waiting to be claimed?
What can we finally lay down?
MEET DONNA
I was inspired to write THE PENNY after losing my mother to dementia and after decades of work as a nurse witnessing how women’s lives, choices, and sacrifices are often absorbed quietly and left unnamed. Nursing trained me to listen not only to what is spoken, but to what is withheld, to the silences women carry around caregiving, desire, grief, and duty. This novel grew from lived proximity to loss and from observing how devotion, when unexamined, can become erasure.
My career has centered on listening to what people say, what they cannot say, and what is carried silently across generations. That practice of deep witnessing shapes the emotional architecture of THE PENNY.
Does death close a door or open it?
PRAISE FOR THE PENNY
- Advance Reader
'THE PENNY left me in tears sometimes and wanting to get to the
end fast but also wanting to savor. The love scenes so well done!
Can not wait to see it in the shelf!'
'I hope the companion diaries have the full love scenes steamy :)
I identified with Franny her love for Rosa was so pure.'
Writing Group Feedback
'I cannot wait to find out what happens with the priest and Luigia - I could feel their love. '
'Growing up with a male dominated religion I felt the shame unravel THANK YOU DONNA'
'Book clubs are going to go crazy for this book. Every woman was relatable.'
Early Beta Reader
The women were all so different - the story moved so well I could not stop reading!
'Donna's command of lyrical language, humor and death kept me up reading.'
