HVWG member Paul Castellani announces the publication of his latest novel, NEXT.
At sixty, Mark and Laura Vanderman have built compatible and comfortable lives. Mark, a public school superintendent, wants one final renewal of his contract before he retires. Laura, director of a private social services agency, grapples with political pressures that force her to consider whether she should soldier on or quit. Their two children and extended families present no more than the usual complications of people in their upper-middle class circumstances. As they muddle through difficulties they hope they can manage, a surprise bombshell from Mark’s past unearths secrets that threaten his job and marriage and forces Mark and Laura to make life-changing decisions about what they do next.
Paul Castellani is the author of four novels: Sputnik Summer (North County Books) is the story of a teenager whose testimony about a homicide rips apart an Adirondack resort town. Natalie’s Wars (Donwood Books) is the story of a woman who struggles through WW II on the home front and then with a husband psychologically damaged by the war in the years after; Marching On (Donwood Books) is the story of a woman striving to make a life of her own as she contends with the entanglements and competing demands of marriage, family, and friendship. The Prodigal’s Brother (Donwood Books) is the story of a man tangled in a family construction business that rode the housing boom of the last decade and implodes in the financial collapse of 2008 with deadly consequences.
Before concentrating exclusively on fiction, as a researcher and teacher, Paul published a number of articles, chapters, and books on public policy. The most recent, “From Snake Pits to Cash Cows: Politics and Public Institutions in New York” (SUNY Press), was featured in several articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post. In addition to teaching in American colleges and universities, he received Fulbright fellowships to teach in Hungary and The Netherlands.
NEXT is available at I Love Books, The Book House, Market Block Books, the Bethlehem and other local libraries, as well as on Amazon (paperback & ebook).
Paul will discuss NEXT at the Albany Public Library Main Branch on July 22 at 2:00 PM
For more on the background to NEXT and Paul’s other novels see his website paulcastellani.com.
