Stunning images in Donna D. Vitucci’s compelling novel Salt of Patriots will haunt you–a flock of starlings falls dead while flying through toxic smoke, a drinking hose shoots foul liquid at a child’s feet, a man climbs a silo to be closer to the sky. For the families employed at this historical and ominous 1950’s atomic plant, we worry every inch of the way, and not just because of the dangerous work, but because Vitucci has created men, women and children who we care about intensely.  We root for them in life and love, and we are heartbroken when they can’t, and won’t, shy from their duties.

– Ann Joslin Williams, author of Down From Cascom Mountain and The Woman in the Woods.

A young couple argue and break up, triggering a chain of events that will transform two families.  Donna Vitucci’s debut novel tackles a vital human question:  How do we prevail when the weight of loss and regret threatens to drag us under?  Vitucci’s writing is compassionate and wise.  At Bobby Trivette’s Grave is a story to savor and, finally, be heartened by.

—David Long, author of The Falling Boy and The Inhabited World

Donna Vitucci shines a spotlight on the Department of Energy in the 1950s, asking the subversive question—what if there had been an atomic plant in Our Town? She is a voice of reason for these troubled times, capturing the lives of working stiffs and their attempts to secure some kind of normalcy for their families as the daily grind at the plant poisons their lives and everything round them.

–Richard Peabody, author of Blue Suburban Skies

Donna Vitucci has written an exceptional tale about life-giving dreams and deadly secrets, about patriotism and the exploitation of workers set in and around a uranium processing plant in Ohio in the 1950s. Salt of Patriots is a marvelous and often unsettling novel full of honesty, heart, and grace. It’s both seductive and harrowing. Accidents happen. Families fall apart. Decent and honorable men are fed a diet of toxic lies. Here is the story of the beginning of the end of American post-war age of innocence.

—John Dufresne, author of I Don’t Like Where This Is Going

A tale of teenage love and loss, this week’s feature explores small-town life in the Midwest and a family navigating through it. A tragic accident takes the life of Dru Ann’s love, and her spiral of grief trickles into the lives of everyone around her. West Lafayette Public Library Director Nick Schenkel has a review.

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From its opening paragraph, In Euphoria shows we are reading an extremely gifted, lyrical writer, but what ultimately makes this novel so compelling is Pauline, a woman whose narcissistic desires and compulsions wreak havoc on the lives of the men who fall under her spell. She is a singular character.  Donna Vitucci is a writer deserving of a wide and appreciative audience.

– Ron Rash, author of SERENA and THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT.

When you slam the door shut on your boyfriend’s pleas you don’t expect to never see his beautiful face again.

A simple silly argument, you expect to get past it. You expect to love, fight, make up and love more. You’re young and there’s plenty of joy to come. But Bobby Trivette meets with a tragic accident in Kentucky’s back hills, and Dru Ann’s future turns to pure free fall.

Her grief spiral sets everyone connected to her evaluating the ones they love and the ways they’ve lived in this small town of Paris, Kentucky, forever in the shadow and the spirit of the Cane Ridge Shrine.