We celebrate and share the success of Oswego alumni authors, illustrators and recording artists, who may ask their publisher/distributor to send a copy of the work to the Oswego alumni office to be considered for this column and our website, where cover photos of all works in this column will be displayed.
Thomas MacPherson ’73
Crossing Cultures: A Sicilian and American Family in Western New York
Milne Library, 2016.
Visual artist MacPherson uses graphic narrative to tell family stories spanning generations of two immigrant families: one Sicilian and one Scottish. The book shares the hardships faced by a family at the boundaries of Italian and American cultures, and examines the intersection with German- and Scottish-Americans as the family married out of the circle of Sicilian immigrants. These character studies are a compelling blend of oral history, direct observation, family photographs, original egg tempera and oil portrait paintings, and historical events that shaped lives in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Thomas M. Barden M’00
Napoleon’s Purgatory: The Unseen Humanity of the ’Corsican Ogre’
in Fatal Exile
Vernon Press, 2017.
Napoleon’s Purgatory portrays the human side of Napoleon Bonaparte as revealed by those who shared his exile on the island of St. Helena. Through the diaries and journals of the emperor’s servants, generals and companions come the stories of Napoleon’s tender love for children, his captivating sense of humor, his eternal love for Josephine and his agonizing death. While many considered Napoleon the “Corsican Ogre” for the wars he waged across Europe, he was anything but during his exile on St. Helena.
Lou Paduano ’04
Tales From Portents: A Greystone Collection Novel
Eleven Ten Publishing, 2016.
The beasts Detective Loren and Soriya Greystone battled in Paduano’s debut novel Signs of Portents were just a hint of what lurks in the city of Portents. Tales From Portents explores the city’s immersive history, including stories of Loren’s descent after his wife’s death and his opportunity to have her rise from the grave. Soriya battles gremlins, navigates lessons from Mentor and meets the werewolf Luchik. Follow new characters as they come face-to-face with the horrors of Portents—both human and otherwise.
Michael Sova ’91
Parlor City Paradise
Michael Sova Publishing, 2016.
Skid Row has been on his own since the age of 14. He gets by well enough, but thinks he’d like something more out of life than an occasional toke, his dead-end job and a rented room at the Y. Bullfrog came from a very different upbringing. He had loving parents and all the benefits of the upper middle class. Then, Bullfrog’s world was turned tragically upside-down, and he became a drifter, disillusioned and without any real direction. Skid Row and Bullfrog cross paths, and a disastrous first meeting gradually develops into an unlikely friendship. Together, they hatch a perilous scheme that could be the answer to all of their problems.
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