The Queen of Steeplechase Park is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato. Pregnant at...
The Queen of Steeplechase Park is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato.
Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, Bella is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis, her newfound family of queercentric outcasts, and a top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peekaboo striptease routines, a doomed mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love. It all leads Bella back home, to the scene of her original sin, where she boldly faces matters of life and death, questions of forgiveness, and a holy mess only the healing properties of great Italian cooking can fix.
Author: David Ciminello
Publisher: Forest Avenue Press
Published: 05/07/2024
Pages: 470
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.80h x 6.00w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781942436614
Review Citation(s): Foreword 04/25/2024
About the AuthorDavid Ciminello is a Lambda Literary Fellow and the proud recipient of a Table 4 Writers Foundation Grant. His fiction has appeared in the Lambda Award-winning anthology
Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City,
Nailed Magazine, and in fine artist Stephen O'Donnell's
The Untold Gaze. His original screenplay
Bruno, an Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting finalist, was made into a motion picture directed by Shirley MacLaine and stars Kathy Bates, Gary Sinese, and Jennifer Tilly. As an actor David has guest starred on
Seinfeld ("The Barber"),
Murder She Wrote,
Matlock, and
Kojak. David and his husband, photographer and podcast artist Brian Delaney, reside in Portland, Oregon.
