Description:

A powerful, lyrical and touching tale of a turbulent adolescent trying to break out of the suffocating, prison-like confinements of family, poverty and religion in a small town, Wait Until Spring, Bandini tells the story of a winter in the childhood of Arturo Bandini, oldest son of Italian immigrants living in Colorado during the Great Depression. With its powerful and evocative account of tragic love affairs, grinding poverty and adolescence in turmoil, this first novel from the Bandini quartet is a much-neglected masterpiece of modern American literature. ### Review "Fante was my God." Charles Bukowski "If you haven't yet discovered John Fante, you're in for a wonderful treat." Evening Standard "Fante's writing has a freshness that should shame many of today's scribblers." Sunday Herald "An excellent rites of passage tale, infused with all the gory humiliation, rich humour and treacherous hormones of adolescence." Buzz" ### About the Author John Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in 1932. His first novel, *Wait Until Spring*, Bandini, was published in 1938 and was the first of his Arturo Bandini series of novels, which also include *The Road to Los Angeles* and *Ask the Dust*. A prolific screenwriter, he was stricken with diabetes in 1955. Complications from the disease brought about his blindness in 1978 and, within two years, the amputation of both legs. He continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and published *Dreams from Bunker Hill*, the final installment of the Arturo Bandini series, in 1982. He died on May 8, 1983, at the age of seventy-four.