Bella: a Novel
By Annadora Perillo
Independently Published
Published: December 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798304259699
Genre
What happens when someone unleashes the power of their desire while defying the great law of the Universe?
Bella is a tale of love and witchcraft set in the tiny, Italian, star-shaped city of Sabbioneta. Caught in a witch’s spell, a girl dreams of escape. But words of magic have been spoken by someone with power, and the series of events set in motion by the prophecy is bound to continue until the pattern of enchantment is complete. The novel weaves the multigenerational story of a family and the etiology of a curse while delving into themes of romance and redemption, death, resurrection, transformation, and the numinous buoyancy of the spirit. Within this timeless narrative of magic and karma, of sleeping beauties and awakening princesses, the characters are compelled to escape or transcend the convent walls and castle towers of their existence, wars, oppression, and even the bonfires of the Inquisition for which they are destined—because they are women, witches, wizards, dreamers.
“Let the fairest have it.” —E. Nesbit, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
About the Author
Annadora Perillo is an award-winning poet and novelist whose work has been featured in Oberon Magazine’s Twenty-First Annual Issue, and A Feast of Narrative: An Anthology of Short Stories by Italian-American Writers; her manuscript, Bella, was a finalist for the Heekin Foundation’s James Fellowship for the Novel-in-Progress. She graduated from Marymount College and Richmond College in London with a BA in English and the Gold Medal in Creative Writing from Marymount.
Annadora believes these biographical details were a prerequisite to writing Bella –She was born in Bari, Italy, but continued life in the Bronx, NY. She worked in the travel industry and in Rockland County, NY youth services (where fairytales were always at her fingertips). Her paternal grandfather was born in Brazil, her great aunt lived her life in cloister, and her mother was convinced that she’d been cursed.
She has two grown sons (a broom and a cat).