Gabriele, Lisa

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Gabriele, Lisa

PERSONAL: Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Education: Graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House of Canada Limited, One Toronto St., Unit 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6, Canada.

CAREER: Worked variously as a cab driver, barmaid, waitress, and salesperson; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, producer, writer, reporter, and researcher; LifeSize Television (television production company), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, executive producer. Producer for the History Channel and Life Network.

WRITINGS:

Tempting Faith DiNapoli (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

Columnist for Vice; contributor to periodicals, including Nerve, National Post, and Washington Post.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Lisa Gabriele is a writer who has also worked as a producer and cinematographer, first for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and others, then for her own documentary-production company, LifeSize Television, in Toronto. With the publication of her debut novel, Tempting Faith DiNapoli, she moved to New York City to begin work on another book.

The protagonist of Tempting Faith DiNapoli, Faith, is one of four children of Joe, an Italian immigrant, and Nancy, who discards Catholicism on the day of Faith's First Communion. Soon Nancy becomes a rebellious chain-smoking and drinking mother who, although she smacks them around, deeply loves her children. When her father finds work in Calgary, Faith's parents, whose marriage was not strong to begin with, separate. Faith, who had tried to keep the family's religion alive, becomes distracted by boys, sex, and the temptations of shoplifting, and she is eventually sent to a Church retreat for troubled children. When she reads her mother's diaries, Faith discovers that her mother had lived fast and loose at her age and that she has a dark secret that helps to explain the family history.

Booklist reviewer Joanne Wilkinson commented that "Faith may be more sinner than saint," but she also serves as an "inspiration to good Catholic girls everywhere." Amy Brozio-Andrews wrote in Library Journal that Gabriele's debut "is emotionally intense and ultimately satisfying."