Author(s): Ursula Hegi

Fiction

In the Italian-American community of New York's Bronx, one family battles to survive the unthinkable.

In December of 1953, Anthony Amedeo's world is rooted in his Bronx neighbourhood, the Paradise Theatre, the Yankee stadium, and in his imagination, where he longs for a stencil kit to decorate the windows like all the other kids on the street. Instead he gets a very different present: his Uncle Malcolm's family.

Malcolm is in jail for stealing, once again, from his last new job, and Anthony's Aunt Floria and twin cousins settle into the Amedeo's fifth-floor apartment. Sharing a room is agony for Anthony, despite his love for the girls. But the real change in his life comes one evening, when he causes the unimaginable to happen, changing each of their lives forever.

With warmth, humour and consummate storytelling, bestselling author Ursula Hegi charts the rise, fall and redemption of the endearing, but deeply flawed, Amedeos over the last half of the twentieth century. Examining the dark side of family, and how the power of a single event can reverberate through the generations, Sacred Time is the work of one of our most powerful storytellers at the very height of her powers.