{"id":81,"date":"2020-10-24T14:20:31","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T14:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/?page_id=81"},"modified":"2025-06-03T10:52:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T14:52:39","slug":"bio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/bio\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time Left Between Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Available at Barnes&Noble<\/a> and independent bookshops like The Last Bookstore <\/a>(LA), Books Are Magic<\/a> (NYC), Harriet’s Bookshop<\/a> (Philly), East City Bookshop<\/a> (DC), or direct at Univ. of Nebraska Press<\/a>. Order in the UK at Blackwell’s<\/a> and throughout the EU and Australia. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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“The author’s skillful prose vividly captures the daily triumphs and tragedies of the hero foot soldier, and the crucible of South Philadelphia that produced so many…Adapt the book.” \u2014 Chris Zarpas, Executive Producer of The Sandlot<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“VERDICT: Hers is a deeply personal venture but also one of significant importance now and for all future generations to learn from.” \u2014 Library Journal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA compelling World War II read\u2014a first-rate page-turner...<\/em> There is more than one hero in these pages.\u201d \u2014 former VA Congressman Bill Whitehurst (1969\u201387), Navy aviator Pacific Theater (1943\u201346)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The author has the skill to make her intimate family portraits as precise as a song by Frank Sinatra.” \u2014 Lincoln Star Journal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell crafted and courageous, this book should take its rightful place as the next one you read.\u201d \u2014 Italian America Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeFonzo “combines memoir, history, travel, and adventure in a groundbreaking hybrid work” \u2014 Washington Independent Review of Books<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A beautiful family history is preserved, all while transporting readers across time dimensions and continents…The book’s greatest strengths lie in its relatability.” \u2014 Broad Street Review<\/em>, Philadelphia<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Both nostalgic and gripping, The Time Left between Us is a meditation on how deeply connected the past is to the present and how the truth\u2014and what we remember \u2014are often fragmented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A blend of memoir, history, travel, adventure, and oral storytelling, The Time Left between Us<\/em> bridges the gap between the generation who fought and the generation who has forgotten. Alicia takes an unplanned visit to the Normandy beaches while staying in Paris. She becomes distraught after realizing how little she knows about the war and her grandfather experiences, which until then had remained largely unspoken. Across landscapes and lifetimes, she retraces her beloved grandfather\u2019s tour through World War II Europe. The eighty-four-year-old Del recounts stories as an Army combat engineer surviving major campaigns, including Normandy, St. Lo, the Bulge, H\u00fcrtgenwald, Remagen, then liberating concentration camps. In this braided narrative nonfiction, Alicia’s and Del’s childhood parallel in a traditional Italian American family in Philadelphia. Spanning ten years, Alicia’s travels and research take an unexpected detour after she inherits a Nazi Waffen-SS diary from her grandfather, and in her final trip, returns to Germany to confront the diary owner\u2019s family. Their storylines merge when Del undergoes open-heart surgery and Alicia must be the one to safeguard the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Available at Barnes&Noble and independent bookshops like The Last Bookstore (LA), Books Are Magic (NYC), Harriet’s Bookshop (Philly), East City Bookshop (DC), or direct at Univ. of Nebraska Press. Order in the UK at Blackwell’s and throughout the EU and Australia. “The author’s skillful prose vividly captures the daily triumphs and tragedies of the hero […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18932,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18932"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/adefonzo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}