Tomato Rhapsody Book

A village in Tuscany is the setting for this joyous debut—a novel that defies all our expectations as it puts a fresh, clever, captivating spin on the age-old tale of forbidden love. Rich in literary delights, filled with spectacular wordplay, and rife with the bawdy humor of Shakespeare’s comedies, Tomato Rhapsody is the almost-true tale of how the tomato came to Italy—at once a brilliantly inventive fable of love, lust, and longing, and a dazzling feast for the imagination.

This is a story born from love—a forbidden love—between Davido, an Ebreo tomato farmer, and Mari, a beautiful Catholic girl.…But it’s not only Davido and Mari who have secrets of the heart. Everyone around them yearns for something—from Davido’s grandfather, who tenderly cultivates the tomato plant he stole on his voyages with Columbus, to Mari’s villainous stepfather, whose eye is trained on his stepdaughter’s virginity and his neighbor’s land.

Caught in the midst of these passions and machinations is a village full of eccentrics who speak in rhyme, celebrate the Feast of the Drunken Saint, and live a life untouched by the passage of time. The schemes and dreams of these men and women are about to change as what is forbidden becomes too delicious to resist. Tradition, religion, and good taste collide unforgettably in a story about the courage to pursue love and tomato sauce at all costs.

Publishers Weekly

From the very beginning of Schell's debut novel, a would-be Shakespearean fable set in a 16th-century Tuscan village, food lust takes center stage. While cruel-hearted olive tycoon Giuseppe and his underling, Benito, forage for truffles, the Jewish farmer Davido worships the tomato plants on his farm: "the plant's fragrance... transcended his olfactory organs to purify his heart and cleanse his mind." When the new priest allows Davido's "love apples" into town for the first time, life starts to get complicated. For one, the stepdaughter of our villain, Giuseppe, falls for the already betrothed Davido-an outcast besides, due to his station and religion. Bawdy hijinks coded in ribald Italian reach a climax at the village's Feast of the Drunken Saint donkey race, a jarring spin on Shakespeare's more tawdry rhymes. Attempts at a similarly Shakespearean cast of characters (the novel opens with an actual cast of characters) instead result in a silly collection of one-dimensional characters who keep the tale moving until the fate of our star-crossed lovers, and of tomato sauce, are predictably resolved. (June)

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