The book
Recollections: The Bay Area and Beyond
An anthology in two parts — prose and free verse poetry.
Fifty-odd years of writing, gathered into one volume: personal prose of Bay Area events and free verse poetry arranged by what transpired throughout those years--experiences, family, observations, seasons, puppies, the sea, and finality.
Novia Cataldo was born in Oakland shortly after the Wall Street crash. She grew up on a rented farm outside Pleasanton, lost her father in an auto accident west of Castro Valley in 1936, was raised in part by a grandmother who retained her ancestry but lost her six sons, walked the Fruitvale railroad tracks to school, worked at The Wall Street Journal in 1960s Oakland, and finished her administrative life at the University of California.
What she observed, and ultimately lived, is all here.
Retailer links pending publication
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
F. Scott Fitzgerald · the book's epigraph
Novia Y. Cataldo
Recollections: The Bay Area and Beyond
Dedicated to the men and women of the American Armed Forces who died or served in the Pacific and European Theaters during World War II.