Ronald J. Ambrosetti
Is an American novelist who holds a doctorate in English. Ambrosetti is brilliant at weaving fact and fiction together, using his military and academic background to create a refined, but familiar masterpiece. Born in 1945, Ronald J Ambrosetti is the son of second generation Italian Immigrants. His father had been serving on B-17’s during WWII and then was assigned to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico. His life follows extraordinary paths, including spending all of his high school years and first year in college in a Roman Catholic seminary. The timing of those years was such that military service in Vietnam was all but a sure thing. Thus, having been drafted in 1969, five years in the Army followed closely to that seminary experience. Oddly, spending a pair of 5-year tandem stints in all male communities has become the backdrop of Ambrosetti’s breakout novel.
Homologous Homunculus: Arcane Alphabet
For nearly sixteen centuries now, since the birth of the English language in the
fusion of Latin and West Germanic dialects, the language we know as “English” has
ascended from the linguistic remnants of the Roman Empire to the dominant world
language in the 21st century.
Much like the anatomical comparison of metatarsal bones among related species,
the English language that we use today reflects and contains the vestiges of our
past and the particular usages of those speakers who have gone before us.
Aside from the absorption of French into Middle English after the Norman
Conquest of England in 1066, other major influences in the development of the English
language involved not only international loan-words but also the internal borrowings
and dominance of certain dialects in the language itself. The popularity and rise of
major native writers such as Chaucer and Shakespeare influenced the shaping of the
English dialects used in the words and idioms that they used-and the invention of the
printing press placed those literary works in the mainstream of spoken English also.
Nowadays, due to the rise of international trade, travel, communication and
technology, a reversal of sorts has occurred. The English language seems to be exporting
its words and idioms-instant messaging is shaping abbreviations and short-circuited
sentence structure; airline pilots from any country in any airport on the globe are
communicating with air traffic control in English.
But … our linguistic metatarsals are still afoot … so to speak. The following pages
explore and suggest a facet of word play that echoes our love of sounds and an infinite
number of combinations-with lots of old bones and vestigial anatomy included.
The Last Chapter: A Novella
Ronald Ambrosetti’s The Last Chapter: A Novella is the story of one man’s redemption and one man’s revenge—and the woman caught between. And their lives and those around them are shaped by war, love, betrayal and remorse. The novella is not a war story, but the Vietnam war is a central event that interrupts the lives of its inadvertent participants and reaches through the decades with ineluctable human actions and motives. Dr. John Restivo, a beloved professor in a small college in Upstate New York, returns to a country torn by a doomed American military intervention that he was drawn into twenty-five years earlier. As a Fulbright Exchange Scholar a quarter of a century later, John finds that the New Vietnam has entered an international consortium of education, trade and technology, but the actions and secrets of the past cannot be masked or forgiven. While much has been written about America’s war during a period of explosive cultural change and promise, Ambrosetti brings a thoughtful novella that suggests a circuitry of intersections in the larger web of national politics and human pawns.
To download a complimentary copy of the eBook, please follow the link on the button below. Be sure to use the password: frame
Download eBook - password “frame”
MAIDEN CHOICE LANE
After 5 years in the Roman Catholic seminary in Maryland, 19 year old John Angelina, having set up a clandestine radio room, is asked to leave the cloister. John walks out of the restrictive 15th century institutional church and is catapulted into the burgeoning, provocative “Great Society” of 1964. Once out of the safety and strict limits of this excessive seclusion, young Angelina experiences the maelstroms of family expectations and ties, the Vietnam draft, a World Series classic, explosive civil rights tensions and a sojourn to Appalachia. Drafted during the Vietnam conflict, John is commissioned as an Army officer and faces his appointment in Asia. As he understands more of his father’s assignment at the Manhattan Project, John the ex-seminarian provides the expiation of the sins of the father. Maiden Choice Lane is an intimate portrait of the first-born son of a disabled WWII veteran. John Angelina, brave and resilient, journeys through a compelling and chaotic time in American history, when he is confronted with gut-wrenching circumstances in a drastically changing culture, as worlds collide at an uncontrollable pace. At each intersection, sometimes forbidden, John’s life is guided by choices, some forced, all the while wondering, “what if?” Those alternatives, not chosen, are still out there…haunting, powerful and thrilling.
Maiden Choice Lane Chapter by Chapter
Chapter One: Autumn 1944
“There they were greeted by an unsmiling lieutenant colonel who would eventually pilot the most-famous-of-all B-29 to be named after his mother, Enola Gay Haggard of Glidden, Iowa.”
Chapter Two: 1947-1959
“The real face that haunted me in those early and solitary days at Cloud Cap was that of my mother. For some strange reason, I kept thinking of her reaction to my telling her that I wanted to be a priest. I remember her standing in the kitchen in the house on 35th Street on a golden October day just less than a year ago. She cried as she kept on ironing.” 
Chapter Three: November 1963
“During one of Ducky’s pre-Mass meditations, one of the boys had foolishly broken out a pair of nail clippers and had begun a delicate but persistent attentiveness to cutting his fingernails. After what seemed an eternity, especially to the boys who felt the coming storm, the booming voice of the patience-pushed prefect queried suddenly: ‘What are you, a centipede?’” 
Chapter Four: November 1965
“Drafted himself by the Towson draft board on the Monday after Easter in 1968, John stopped in the bar at Lanvale late in December of that year as he prepared to report to induction at Fort Holabird.” 
Chapter Five: Summer 1966
“One of the painters in the car was a local son of the hollows and guided the driver to a remote little clutch of houses a little way off of the main road. A few miles earlier, back on the main road, the local guide, who, incidentally, had displayed a photographic memory for Latin and Greek texts at Cloud Cap years ago, pointed out a non-descript church at the roadside that was known for its snake handling.” 
Chapter Six: Autumn 1966
“After packing their equipment, John and his uncle looked for the Philly front office to offer both condolences for the game and gratitude for the seats. John left the equipment with his uncle and looked for a restroom before the ninety-mile trek back to Baltimore. John took two turns in the tunnels between the clubhouses and was lost. He wandered into a locker room that was too quiet to be off limits. He found himself looking directly at Sandy Koufax, whose left arm was grotesquely swollen, even under a rubber set of wraps in the ice water bucket. The legendary pitcher looked up and smiled as he hoisted a bottle of beer to his lips. Two empties reposed by the tub of water.” 
Chapter Seven: November 1968
“Crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey, John wondered how he had come to be on this bus. This time and place were so incongruous to what his life had been in the months leading up to his military induction.” 
Chapter Eight: July 1968
“The small circle of failed killers was actually sitting in a mock military cemetery. They were there by accident, quite literally. Specifically, each had been sent there earlier in the day as a form of punishment when his landmine, unloaded but fused with a light charge, exploded prematurely during the day’s training exercise.” 
Chapter Nine: Spring 1991
“As he circled the streets around the Watts Towers, John was struck by the fact that the infamous neighborhood of Watts was no longer a totally African-American neighborhood. Latino kids played in the streets in front of houses with Mexican-American religious statues in the yards and Madonna icons painted on the panels of decrepit Chevy vans.” 
Chapter Ten: Summer 2000
“The saintly priest extended his bloody and gloved hands with palms upward and held them toward Joseph. “My son, Christ himself saved us in blood. We are born in the blood of life at birth and reborn in Christ’s blood to our eternal salvation. The mysteries of life and faith are drenched in blood.” 
Chapter Eleven: July 1970
“Hardly listening to their commanding officer, the two Johns push passed the gathering crowd, and at the same moment, saw that the young soldier was alive and conscious — and he knew that a live undetonated RPG-7 was sticking out of his back. He had taken a direct hit and lived because the RPG did not detonate.” Contact Us
Ambrosetti Books – Dies Irae Publishing