Richard Donze is a physician author whose poems and essays have appeared in medical journals and newsletters and four anthologies of physician poetry: Blood and Bone, Primary Care, Uncharted Lines and Voices from the Front Lines: The Pandemic and the Humanities. In 1998 Nova Science Publishers (Imprint, Kroshka Books) published his nonfiction book Dinner Music: How to Compose the Permanently Perfect Diet, a right-brained approach to nutrition advice. The Natural Order of Things, his first poetry collection, was published in November 2021 by Finishing Line Press. Dr. Donze was an undergraduate English major at the University of Pennsylvania before embarking on a medical career, and currently practices at Chester County Hospital in West Chester, PA, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, as Medical Director of the Hospital’s Occupational Medicine Program. He lives in West Chester, PA with his wife Kathleen. The Secret Saint Anthony Prayer is his first published work of fiction.
Joseph Cairone is an artist and former landscape architect. His early fascination with all things visual was initially inspired by the great comic book and graphic novel artists of the 1950’s and 60’s. It continued through his Rutgers University formal education and subsequent professionally completed projects throughout diverse regions of the country. Having concluded a successful 44-year career as a principal Landscape Architect of his own Philadelphia-based design firm, Joe now lives in Havertown, PA with his wife, Donna, and their rescue dogs, participating in regional art shows/exhibits and plein air events. The collection of illustrations for this novel is the product of a lifelong friendship with the author.
PRAISE:
“Alumni of a Catholic elementary school plan a 50-odd year reunion, recalling the schemes and dreams of their 8th grade selves. While he frames The Secret Saint Anthony Prayer around reunion planning, Richard Donze carries the reader back to events at St. Anthony’s in 1963-64 and creates a vivid sense of the texture of budding adolescence. School rituals, harebrain schemes, and newly discovered urges. Donze writes with clarity and wit, sensitivity and respect. His novel is simply a delight to read!”
–Jack Coulehan, author of The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems
“This intimate and textured novel follows a handful of boys at a Catholic school through the dramatic year of the Kennedy assassination—their friendships, rivalries, infatuations, identity changes, sexual awakenings. Decades later, a reunion reveals their destinies and even solves a possible murder. With luminous prose, suspense, and memorable characterization, this is a fine fiction debut.”
–Nick Lyons, author of Fire in the Straw
“The combination of the writing of Richard Donze and the illustrations of Joseph Cairone provides a good mix in what is an intriguing book that is The Secret Saint Anthony Prayer.”
–Karl J. Kuerner, Artist, Chadds Ford, PA
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