Under the Rose

Flavia Alaya was 22 years old, a radiant but sheltered Italian American on a Fulbright in Italy, when she met Father Harry Browne. When the attraction that began in a cafe in Perugia grew too compelling to resist, they embarked on a relationship that violated one of the most powerful taboos of the Church and of society, yet endured for over 20 years. By day, they were subsumed in progressive community organizing. By night, they were subsumed in a relationship carried out, even through the birth of their three children, in absolute secrecysub rosa, or "under the rose." "Those asking for well-written honesty will be handsomely rewarded. In a poignant, lucid language that combines the pace of fiction with the intimacy of a love letter, her 'memory-ghosts' bring private and social history to full circle, the story of an immigrant's search for freedom of expression. "Under the Rose" is the very model of memoir writing, of a woman's voice finally finding perfect pitch."-"Foreword" "Flavia Alaya has written a memoir with a rare elegiac style. Deeply spiritual with love and tragedy, but finally, a woman triumphant."-Malachy McCourt, author of "A Monk Swimming: A Memoir" "Here is a timeless passion, recalled with a historian's precision. But it is also a modern political document, because these lovers took the definitions with which their times tried to imprison them--definitions of woman, of priest, of powerlessness--and transformed them, first in their own lives, and then out in the world."-Nuala O'Faolain, author of "Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman" "Flavia Alaya's richly textured story kept me up half the night, riveted by its dauntless passion andfierce insight. For those of us who are Italian Americans and sometime Catholics, Alaya's tale will have special power in its unraveling of mysteries and sanctities that shaped our lives. But her headlong rush toward remembrance of things past will have extraordinary resonance, too, for all who have lived, loved, lost--and won."-Sandra M. Gilbert, co-author of "No Man's Land" and "The Madwoman in the Attic" Flavia Alaya served as founding director of the School of Interc