He left for work at the trattoria later than Gió, after the wind had subsided, only tiny tornados of sand stinging his bare ankles as he walked down the winding path away from town, turning right across the circumference of the hill above the bend in the track where his parents had died. In the distance, he heard the sad wail of a train whistle, maybe the same one he had taken from Milan.
When he sat in the place where he might have been sitting when the Danesis found them, the wind had picked up slightly, and in the open field, he could no longer hear the train’s whistle, only a tintinnabulation in his ears.
For a long time he sat staring straight ahead. Nothing but the long ribbon of black tracks and yellow-brown fields—above him Orvieto was concealed by the configuration of hills. Alone, at a place he’d never imagined he would actually see, a kind of wild abandon came over him. He stretched out on the dry grass, brittle enough to cut into his skin like tiny needles, and lying on his back, his eyes closed in the sunlight, he began to roll.
The hill wasn’t at its steepest where he was rolling, but was steep enough for his body to gain momentum—over and over he turned, his arms drawn up against his chest, his legs tightly crossed at the ankles, a rectangle of brilliant blue sky and then a square of hard brown earth, dust in his nose, in his eyes, his face littered with tiny scratches, faster and faster, until his brain was scrambled. And then he rolled to a stop.
What the engineer must have seen was an object coming toward the train just after he had begun to apply the brakes in his approach to Orvieto. Some of the people on the left side of the train saw something rolling toward them as well and braced themselves for an impact.
The train slowed down to about fifty miles an hour as it passed Sam, lying ten, maybe fifteen yards from the bend in the track, his hands over his ears little protection against the deafening sound. All of this happened in a matter of seconds.
It didn’t occur to Sam until later that he might not have stopped before he reached the tracks. There’d been no way to know in advance that the terrain flattened yards from the bend. Nor had he anticipated the possibility of danger. It was as though he were just a boy, wonderfully invincible, rolling down a hill, trusting the force of gravity.
When the train had gone, leaving in its wake a virtual hurricane of dust, Sam rolled in the dirt, rubbing his back and shoulders into the earth near the place he had seen in the photograph in the Corriere della Sera.
He finally stood up and headed back toward the winding path to the trattoria, and he was covered, his hair matted, his eyes crusted, his face splotched, with the reddish soil of Orvieto.
By the time he got to the path, the air had cleared, opening to a high piercing blue sky, the scrubby taupe landscape articulate as far as he could see.
He heard voices ahead, perhaps around the next bend, where a broad-faced Italian replica of the Virgin painted on wood was hammered to an olive tree, or below, where the ground leveled and the walking on cobblestones was particularly difficult. Sam suddenly wondered how he might appear to a stranger. He reached out his arms to check, pleased to see the dust he had rolled in had mixed with his sweat from the terrific morning heat and was adhering to his skin like clay, baking there to a thin protective coating, glossed ceramic, burnt umber, the color of the Renaissance.
Sam could hear their high-spirited conversation, not actual words, but the tone of them, and as the words clarified in the bone-dry air, the language he heard was not Italian.
He stopped, absolutely still, held his breath so he wouldn’t have to hear his own breathing, wrapped his arms around himself, and listened, above the harmonica sounds of the light wind, the crabby bird talk in the brush.
What he heard coming toward him on the footpath were words spoken in his own language.
On the train to Rome, they sat in facing seats. Julia pressed against Sam’s shoulder could not stop weeping. An elderly Italian woman seated across the aisle from them leaned over, dropping a linen handkerchief in Julia’s lap.
“Keep, keep,” she said.
They had been with the Danesis for three days, eating and drinking and talking, sleeping together in the same large room in which they had slept when they were little, stretched out on mattresses on the tile floor, talking into the night.
“How did you know where I was?” Sam asked from his cot, lying in darkness lit by a sky scattered with stars, a slender moon dipping into the corner of the window, a brushstroke of pale silver.
On the day Rebecca Frankel had called, the day her postcard had arrived with Miriam’s address in Boston, they knew how to find him. But that night William had had a stroke, so they went first to Grand Rapids.
“His memory is completely gone,” Charlotte said.
“I know,” Sam said. “I spoke with him.”
“Except for Noli,” Julia said. “He remembers her.”
They had stayed almost a week to settle their grandfather, and then Oliver had called Miriam Frankel, whose number they got on the postcard. Miriam had suggested Orvieto.
Detective Howell, checking the passenger lists from Boston to Milan, found Sam’s name on a Delta Airlines flight August 12.
The Danesi house was full of food, lunch stretching into supper, the brilliant sun giving way to dusk, shimmering candles on the long table, all the places taken by people from the village, and the Danesi family coming to take a look at the McWilliamses in the spirit of a funeral or a wedding, a celebration without the ceremony.
On the first night, with maybe thirty people in the house drinking red wine, Gió asked Sam to do a scene from Plum & Jaggers.
“Just to show how you make laughing in America,” he said.
“In English?” Sam asked.
“What difference?” Gió said. “Laughing is laughing, yes?”
“I don’t think we can,” Sam said, and he grabbed Gió around the shoulders, kissed his cheek. “We are already laughing here.”
On Friday, August 21, the Danesi family walked down the hill with the McWilliamses from their house to the station at Orvieto to meet the noon train to Rome. They arrived just as the sandy-haired conductor stepped off the train—the same one who had been on Sam’s train from Milan. Susanna gripped the conductor’s hand, speaking in rapid Italian, her arms spread, circling the McWilliamses.
“Mamma’s telling him about you,” Gió said.
The conductor reached over and took both of Sam’s hands in his. And then Charlotte’s and Oliver’s and Julia’s.
“He grew up in the next village,” Gió translated for them. “He remembers.”
As the train pulled out of the station, the Danesis lined the platform, an army of them in the bright noon sun, waving and waving, their eyes following the moving train, their mouths like so many sparrows open in song, calling “Ciao, ciao, ciao.”
The train to Rome stopped at every small town, winding through the arid farmland, the groves of olive trees, almost prehistoric, black branches like craggy arms reaching to sky, rolling brown hills, splashed with small clusters of terra cotta houses. During the trip, as frames of Italian villages whipped by too quickly for definition, the McWilliamses were silent, staring out the window as if words between them could be lost in translation.
The city of Rome began long before the train pulled into Termini station as the farmland sprinkled with cottages gave way at the northern edge of the city to rows of houses and then apartment blocks, the shutters closed, the flowers in the window boxes drooping, laundry strung over the open spaces flapping in a light wind.
“Roma,” the conductor shouted from the other end of the car. “Roma, Roma,” his voice swinging to a high note.
The McWilliamses stood then, opening the top section of the window beside their seats, sticking their heads out.
A sudden burst of hot air took their breath. A shaft of brilliant light obliterated the view, and for a single moment, t
hey seemed to be spun out of sunlight, woven with the same shimmering threads.
“Roma, Roma,” the conductor was saying as he made his way through the train. And passing the McWilliamses, washed in glorious light, their arms flung around one another, he lowered his voice, and speaking in their direction, he called out, “Station stop, Rome.”
Reader’s Guide for
Plum & Jaggers
Discussion Questions
I HAD a lovely lunch in Washington with Susan Shreve and her daughter Elizabeth—of course, we talked books the whole time! I asked Susan if there were questions she’d suggest for the book clubs to discuss. I’ve woven her questions into #3 and #5.
Why does it matter (or not) whether we, as readers, know with certainty the identity of the stalker?
What do you imagine will happen to Sam, Julia, Oliver, and Charlotte after the book ends?
Why is the set for Plum & Jaggers so important? Is this a TV show you’d like to watch? Why do the network and most viewers consider it a comedy?
Is Sam’s mission to protect his brother and sisters from harm a logical or understandable response to an incident of terror?
Bombs play a serious role in this book from the initial explosion to the shelter to the final bomb. What role does the final bomb play, and do you feel Sam betrayed his siblings by failing to alert them to his plan?
Suggestions for Further Reading
IF YOU enjoy the family dynamics that Shreve describes so well in Plum & Jaggers, try these:
Peter Hedges’ An Ocean in Iowa relates what happens to soon to be seven years old Scotty Ocean and his older sisters after their mother walks out on the family.
The Funnies by J. Robert Lennon is the story of the children of Carl Mix, a fabulously successful cartoonist (think Family Circus) and especially his artist-son Tim, who struggles to carry on his father’s work.
The seven children of a depressed, alcoholic father and a mercurial mother try to navigate their way through life in Susan Minot’s Monkeys.
In Antonya Nelson’s Living to Tell, the Mabie family of Wichita, Kansas, must adjust to the return of 33-year-old Winston, who has spent five years in prison for killing his grandmother in a drunk driving accident.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler takes place as Pearl Tull, the matriarch, lies dying; her three adult children—Cody, Jenny, and Ezra—each recall their own version of the dreadful upbringing they shared.
The Kids Are Alright by Diana, Liz, Dan, and Amanda Welch is a multi-narrator memoir that follows four siblings as they recount their tumultuous childhood and show us just how fickle memory can be.
Readers who appreciated exploring how children react to traumatic events in their lives might want to try:
Tom, Savannah, and Luke Wingo still retain the scars of their difficult childhood at the hands of an abusive father and ineffectual mother, in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes place in post–9/11 New York as nine-year-old Oskar tries to reconnect with the father he lost when the Twin Towers fell by searching for the lock that fits a key his father owned.
Even as an adult, the main character in Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s The Daydreaming Boy, Vahâe Tcheubjian, is still trying to come to grips with his childhood experiences during the Armenian genocide in the years before, during, and after World War I.
In 1973, renowned child psychiatrist Robert Coles won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his series of books that looks at the lives of children under difficult conditions. I’d especially recommend the first volume, called Children in Crisis: A Study in Courage and Fear.
And Susan Richards Shreve suggests these works of fiction: John Irving’s The World According to Garp, Stuart Dybek’s (“master writer of adolescence”) Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, Howard Norman’s What Is Left the Daughter, and Carol Anshaw and Elizabeth Strout “for complicated characters not necessarily beloved like Sam.”
About the Author
SUSAN RICHARDS SHREVE is the author of several novels, including A Student of Living Things and You Are the Love of My Life, as well as the memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven. She has also written dozens of children’s books, including The Lovely Shoes, and is the co-editor or editor of five anthologies. Shreve founded the MFA degree at George Mason University, where she is a professor of English and present co-chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She has also taught at Columbia School of the Arts and Princeton University. Among her numerous accolades are the Guggenheim Award for Fiction, the Grub Street Prize for non-fiction, and the Service Award from Poets & Writers. She lives and writes in Washington, DC.
About Nancy Pearl
NANCY PEARL is a librarian and lifelong reader. She regularly comments on books on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Her books include 2003’s Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; 2005’s More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; Book Crush: For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest, published in 2007; and 2010’s Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. Among her many awards and honors are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal; the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association; the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and Users Services Association of the American Library Association; and the 2004 Women’s National Book Association Award, given to “a living American woman who…has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.”
About Book Lust Rediscoveries
Book Lust Rediscoveries is a series devoted to reprinting some of the best (and now out of print) novels originally published between 1960 and 2000. Each book is personally selected by Nancy Pearl and includes an introduction by her, as well as discussion questions for book groups and a list of recommended further reading.
Plum & Jaggers (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries) Page 22
