This review is from THE BOOK READER. Spring-Summer 2002 edition.

DEAR FRIENDS AND DARLING ROMANS. By Mary Chamberlin, illustrated by Nicola Simbari. IDKPress, paper. This beautifully written, elegantly observed book has a history. Author Chamberlin, an American, moved to Rome in 1954 and she's lived there ever since. But three years into her stay, she wrote this book and it was published for an audience of 1950s America. It's reissued now-and it's just lovely.

Unvarnished America meets varnished, crazy-quilt, wild Italy. "I was in a country where Carmen and La Tosca packed the theater, and Elsie Dinsmore and Pollyanna played to an empty house." She applies for a room to a woman in her late thirties who introduces her to Mamma-together, the two go over recently divorced Chamberlin with the dogmatic eyes of the Catholic centuries. A very human story of a case history of one Elizabeth who came to Italy on a Fullbright, and after a confusing relationship realized: "One Italian romance in a lifetime was enough." Trieste "has the atmosphere of being nowhere more than any place I know."

A trip to Yugoslavia results in culture shock as a man viciously beats a horse and everyone accepts the scene as totally normal. "The cries of the horse sounded louder than they had from above. Was there no way to make them understand that the horse's misery was their own..." The men of Italy, romance, a Latin dentist, the entire panorama of Italy and a Mediterranean culture ten times older than America's. An enthralling, wonderfully observed work of art from fifty years ago, rich with color and emotion and packed with intriguing characters. Chamberlin is truly a master storyteller.

Mary Ellen Johnson is the founder and executive director of the Orphan Train Herigage Society of America. She's also known as "the orphan train lady." This volume is an excellent outgrowth of her interest in the 75-year orphan train era in American history. It is filled with accounts of orphan train riders, written by riders themselves or their descendants. The stories illustrate the wide range of riders' experiences. Some were orphans. Some were abandoned. Other children who rode orphan trains had parents who could not support them and gave them up hoping they'd have better lives. Some accounts describe finding loving families, while others were overworked or suffered abuse. Orphan train riders overcame incredible odds and emerged as heroes of modern history. Read this book to learn more about them.

This novel, set in Rome, is beautifully-written, insightful, witty, and enjoyable Book!

It involves the inhabitants of the Palazzo Salvini in Rome, once the proud Renaissance palace of a cardinal, now a run-down apartment house, distinguished by its smoking electrical wiring, its comatose furnace-and the tenants who share its leaky roof. The tenants, caught up in the complications of this light-hearted, sophisticated comedy of international fun and games, reflect the atmosphere of their residence-either remembering or looking forward to better days.

There's Caroline Salvini, a beautiful American who has been the perfect wife, Italian style, to dashing Lorenzo-until she suspects he's having an affair; there's Caroline's mother-in-law, the Marchesa, nursing her liver through a very trying time and hoping to avert a marital crisis for her son; there's Pippo, the swinger with a get-rich-quick scheme that may get him arrested; and there's Randy, an American boy who keeps finding things in his apartment-a girl in his bed, his freaked-out, nomad friends showing home movies (rated X).

A curious coincidence propels this disparate assemblage into an explosive and hilarious climax that leaves the gracious Old World sputtering indignantly in the motorcycle and marijuana fumes of the graceless new breed.

In a bracing, astringent style that is part spumoni and part spice, Mary Chamberlin writes about the eternal delights of the Eternal City-about Americans in Rome doing as Americans do and Romans doing as Romans have done for centuries.

MARY CHAMBERLIN, the author, was born in Lebanon, Illinois, and is a graduate of Monticello College in Alton, Illinois.

She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and had a brief theatrical career, terminated by marriage and motherhood.

In 1954, she moved to Rome, where she has lived ever since. She is also the author of Dear Friends and Darling Romans, published, as well, by IDKPress, and has written for television, magazines, films, and newspapers.

The script for her award-wining teleplay, The Ascent of P. J. O'Hara, is preserved in the archives of the Steven H. Scheuer Collection at Yale University.