cover image House on Via Gombito

House on Via Gombito

Cw Truesdale. New Rivers Press, $18.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-89823-122-9

The nearly 50 short pieces of travel writing that comprise this volume display such a wealth of perspectives and explore such a variety of locales that the book is a splendid adventure in its own right. In ``Ramont Hall'' Rhiannon Paine looks back to 1973 when, at the age of 25, armed with a broken umbrella, a ``dilapidating Mini'' and youthful enthusiasm, she set out to see England. Helen Degen Cohen, who, as an eight-year-old Jewish girl narrowly escaped being deported to a concentration camp, describes her ``Return to Warsaw'' to visit the Catholic woman who hid her during World War II. Patricia Hampl's ``Italian Two-Part Invention'' savors the romance of a damp Venetian winter; a visit to a monastery during one sunny Umbrian spring triggers a memory of the author's childhood. Melissa Sanders-Self's fictional ``Nameless Things'' follows the daily grind of a young American woman who serves drinks in a Tokyo club that caters to Japanese businessmen. Catherine Stearns's ``Icarus in Africa'' is a series of letters from a feisty woman who signs herself ``Ma'' and who, at 60, starts out to teach at a rural school in Zambia. Sprengnether wrote Rivers, Stories, Houses, Dreamsone title and Truesdale is publisher of New Rivers. (Feb.)