What Makes a Child Lucky

I always cry when I finish a Gioia Timpanelli story even though I'm always feeling joyful. I finished reading her latest, What Makes a Child Lucky, in the shadow of Panama's high mountains, where my mother was born and raised, a town with a river running through it, in Boquete in the far western province of Chirique - a region known for it's strawberries and coffee...and hard work. No one is lazy here! It is much like the Scilian village Gioia writes of so tenderly; the old ones retire to a room sharing their secrets and then rejoin the noisy younger ones to tell their stories while their daughters and their daughters still cook breakfast over an open fire and their sons and their sons still tend the land and cattle. These are the ancient and timeless ways of my mother's people, my people now, too and they evoke Gioia's wisdom of the grandmother, cook and the child in her latest book...the lucky and unlucky...the smell of earth, the seasons of lentils and rain, the practical wisdom of women who tend their own...and look, there is a even a donkey, too grazing in the misty afternoon! As usual, Gioia Timpanelli is art in motion and on the page. She finds magic and myth in the ordinary ritals of story, family, food, and small things that share the eternal dusty road of life and love. Thank the goddess! Gioia Timpanelli is in fine form again and when's the next book coming out?

Gioia Timpanelli is not only a superbly gifted story "teller", but a beautiful story "writer" as well! We are already familiar with the saying that great things often come in small packages. Here is the proof of that wisdom.

Gioia Timpanelli's book "What Makes a Child Lucky" combines the power of traditional folk tale with the freedom of form that fiction allows, and the result is a multi-layered story that gets better with each reading. In fact we need to read it several times to taste the many flavors of this seemingly simple yet very complex tale. We follow the young hero's journey through the classic stages - separation from family, betrayal and loss. He faces great evil and yet survives through his inner goodness and with the help of the mysterious "other" so often present in folk tales and life, if we are lucky. Gioia's use of a language both colloquial and erudite interwoven with great skill makes this simple tale into a feast. The story's primal theme of hunger is the continuous thread that unsettles us and yet enriches us as well. The central character endures poverty and violence, as so many children in the world do, and he reaches the level of myth through his simple nobility and trust. This book is truly soul food and like Gioia's last book "Sometimes the Soul" we will want to return to it again and again.

From the timeless, unyielding soil of rural Sicily springs the tale of a young boy who learns the harsh lessons of the world in the brutal slaying of a dear friend, followed by a dangerous mission that delivers him into the lair of the very criminals who very likely murdered his friend. His fate manipulated by jealous older brothers, Joseph is called by the crooked mayor to perform an impossible task, a trek into the mountains where a ruthless band of robbers resides. Unsure of his role, Joseph obeys, sheltered by a taciturn old woman who cooks bountiful meals for the outlaws and dispenses terse advice to her young charge. His innocence soon relinquished to desperate circumstances, Joseph elects to remain with these men, exquisitely aware of the precariousness of his position, in "the grip of perpetual violence". Gathering wild basil and asparagus for the old woman, Joseph also hoards the advice she sagely dispenses. The putative "Lucky one", Joseph endures the most heinous conditions, side-stepping the inherent brutality of his captors while gradually comprehending the greater truths of his existence vis a vis the world, balancing between survival and the pure joy of nature's bounty ("March sits like a knife, bitter winter on one side, spring on the other."). Guided by the words of the old one, a metaphor for the ancient wisdom of a harsh, beautiful land and its inhabitants, Joseph remains uncowed in spite of the ugliness he faces; he finds serenity in moments, absorbing the strength and vitality of the country. Cast into a challenging place where a lesser soul would wither, Joseph prevails. Given the animosity of his captors, Joseph is unlikely to survive; yet it is in his nature not to submit regardless of overwhelming evidence that he shall ever return to his home. In this haunting retelling of an ancient fable, the old woman signifying the wisdom of the ancestors and those who pass the stories from one generation to another, the boy defines the beauty of the human spirit pitted against daunting odds, triumphing over his oppressors. Poverty often delivers the weak to their baser natures, but one indomitable spirit, a young boy grieving a lost friend, mines the depths of his own heart, blooming in barren soil. Luan Gaines/ 2008.