Amazon Ode to Mamica mia, Mother beloved / Albert Russo Albert Russo Category:  Biography Publisher: CreateSpace / Amazon ISBN-10:  1484874404 Type: Fiction Pages: 364 ISBN-13: 9781484874400 Photos, poems and the full NOVEL entitled AND THERE WAS DAVID-KANZA based on my parents' lives in Africa and Europe, and eulogy received from family and friends around the world, relating to my beloved mother Sarah Russo. Photos, poems and the full NOVEL entitled AND THERE WAS DAVID-KANZA based on my parents' lives in Africa and Europe, and eulogy received from family and friends around the world, relating to my beloved mother Sarah Russo during her long itinerary from her birth in 1920 on the island of Rhodes (Greece), through Southern and Central Africa, Italy and Belgium, where she lived, as well as through her travels with my father to the five continents, up to her last journey, on the 24th March 2013.  She was a passionate reader, in English, French, Italian and Spanish. A wonderful pianist, she loved poetry above all. But more than anything else, it was the purity of her soul we admired the most, with her compassion, her generosity and her sense of humor, for she could be very funny.  Thinking of her, we now laugh, cry and laugh. again. Excerpt Amazon review by David Alexander: Ode to Mamica Mia, Mother Beloved Seldom have I had occasion to read a book as great-hearted and deeply poignant as Albert Russo's homage to his mother, written in commemoration of her departure from his life and from the lives of the many people whose existences she touched. While I never had the opportunity to meet her in person, I nevertheless that in some small but undeniable way I came to know her through my reading and later contemplation of And There Was David-Kanza, which is Albert's semi-autobiographical novel about the origins of his immediate family and their quest for a safe haven from war and genocide that led them to Africa, where Russo was born. Although I was aware that the story in "David-Kanza" was artfully crafted fiction and not documentary nonfiction, and that while the characters and situations it portrayed were drawn from life, and also that the novel was never intended to be a faithful depiction of life itself, I never knew where fiction ended and fact began. Nevertheless I sensed that enough of the qualities and personalities, the landscape of the inner life and the landscape of the heart, of those whose lives populated the novel came through; in short I knew that somewhere, albeit through a glass darkly, I was seeing Russo's family through his eyes and via his words. And what I saw, what I heard and what I clearly understood, was that here were human beings who through thick and thin, through good times and bad, always retained a fundamental goodness of heart and nobility of spirit that many another subjected to the same toils and troubles might have thrown by the wayside. Not them, not Russo's parents. If they persisted in any one thing, if they lost all but saved only what was singly precious, then this single thing was their hearts, their souls. Albert writes, in Mamica Mia that his mother, who spoke and read Italian and Spanish among other languages, often used this very word, alma, which is Spanish for soul, as a term of endearment. Mi alma, Russo recalled her as often beginning a sentence. I find this a telling statement. And I find it small wonder, then, that Russo is above all else an author whose writing explores the depths of the human soul and delves into the secret pathways of the human heart. In the body of work that comprises Russo's lifelong achievement I, an author whose writing more often than not is about war and not love find with great relief a safe haven, and in his most recent and perhaps most poignant work, Ode to Mamica Mia, I also think I find what may be a book whose great and abiding spirit, reflected in its memorable prose and collection of personal photographs, brands me as a fool for not having had the sagaciousness of Albert Russo to have written the reverse. I think Ode to Mamica Mia is a book that belongs on the shelf of every true lover of literature, and every true lover of life. -- David Alexander

review by David Alexander
Seldom have I had occasion to read a book as great-hearted and deeply poignant as Albert Russo's homage to his mother, written in commemoration of her departure from his life and from the lives of the many people whose existences she touched. While I never had the opportunity to meet her in person, I nevertheless that in some small but undeniable way I came to know her through my reading and later contemplation of And There Was David-Kanza, which is Albert's semi-autobiographical novel about the origins of his immediate family and their quest for a safe haven from war and genocide that led them to Africa, where Russo was born.
Although I was aware that the story in "David-Kanza" was artfully crafted fiction and not documentary nonfiction, and that while the characters and situations it portrayed were drawn from life, and also that the novel was never intended to be a faithful depiction of life itself, I never knew where fiction ended and fact began. Nevertheless I sensed that enough of the qualities and personalities, the landscape of the inner life and the landscape of the heart, of those whose lives populated the novel came through; in short I knew that somewhere, albeit through a glass darkly, I was seeing Russo's family through his eyes and via his words. And what I saw, what I heard and what I clearly understood, was that here were human beings who through thick and thin, through good times and bad, always retained a fundamental goodness of heart and nobility of spirit that many another subjected to the same toils and troubles might have thrown by the wayside. Not them, not Russo's parents. If they persisted in any one thing, if they lost all but saved only what was singly precious, then this single thing was their hearts, their souls. Albert writes, in Mamica Mia that his mother, who spoke and read Italian and Spanish among other languages, often used this very word, alma, which is Spanish for soul, as a term of endearment. Mi alma, Russo recalled her as often beginning a sentence. I find this a telling statement. And I find it small wonder, then, that Russo is above all else an author whose writing explores the depths of the human soul and delves into the secret pathways of the human heart.
In the body of work that comprises Russo's lifelong achievement I, an author whose writing more often than not is about war and not love find with great relief a safe haven, and in his most recent and perhaps most poignant work, Ode to Mamica Mia, I also think I find what may be a book whose great and abiding spirit, reflected in its memorable prose and collection of personal photographs, brands me as a fool for not having had the sagaciousness of Albert Russo to have written the reverse. I think Ode to Mamica Mia is a book that belongs on the shelf of every true lover of literature, and every true lover of life. -- David Alexander