Donna Nucci
NURSE · LISTENER · AUTHOR
FROM THE PROLOGUE · LUIGIA, 1880
“He removed his cross and came to me unburdened. We did not speak; it would have been unbearable.”
WHAT EARLY READERS ARE SAYING
“Book clubs are going to go crazy for this book.”
WRITING GROUP READER
“I cannot wait to find out what happens with the priest and Luigia.”
WRITING GROUP READER
“Donna’s command of lyrical language, humor and death kept me up reading.”
EARLY BETA READER
ABOUT THE NOVEL
What did we never know about the women who came before us?
Sant’Avellina, 1880: a midwife meets the priest she loves by the river. Thirty years later, her granddaughter sails for New York, seventeen and pregnant, with a copper penny found on the Naples docks.
Passed from mother to daughter for more than a century, the penny carries the women of one family through New York, New Mexico and the Jersey Shore, toward the secret Italy has kept.
THE FILM
Then Write a Book
Forty-six agents said no. A nurse kept writing anyway.
Here is how The Penny began.
A FREE GIFT FOR AUTHOR UPDATES
A woman you cherish.
What is her story?
Your mother, your grandmother, or another woman you cherish. If she is here, ask her. If she is held in memory, remember her.
Join Author Updates and I will send you a free keepsake: questions to ask her, or to remember her by. If you are willing, share her story with me.
MEET DONNA
Nurse. Listener.
Author.
I am a nurse, a mother, a wife, and now an author. Before I was any of those things, I was a listener. The Penny grew out of a lifetime of listening to women.
By day I lead infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health. I would love to hear from you, whether you are a reader, a book club, or a fellow nurse.
