Richard Vetere Reads from She’s Not There (Bordighera Press, 2023)

It is the summer of 1965, and Christopher Ricci’s mother has run away. Chris’s father, unable to take care of him, decides to leave the thirteen-year-old with his own sister in upstate New York. This coming of age tale chronicles Chris’s attempts to cope with his mother’s absence and to navigate his first love in the midst of the turbulent civil rights and Vietnam War era. She’s Not There is playwright and screenwriter Richard Vetere’s eighth novel.

“Richard Vetere has created an evocative world with sensitively drawn, genuine characters you grow to care about. At the center of it all is the wonderful, sweet story of awakening emotions and learning lessons about love, experienced through the eyes of two intriguing and complex teenagers.”—Linda Habjan, Vice President of Acquisitions, Dramatic Publishings

Discussion led by Fred Gardaphé, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY.