cover image Bloomin': A Novel in Three Acts

Bloomin': A Novel in Three Acts

Maria Ciaccia. Excalibur Publishing (NY), $18.95 (275pp) ISBN 978-0-9627226-0-8

With energy, innocence and optimism reminiscent of the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musicals, four students at the Boston College of Music and Dance in the late 1960s begin rehearsals on a musical called Bloomin,' vowing to take it all the way to Broadway and stardom. These are the wry, upbeat memoirs of lead singer Margo Girard, who chronicles the mishaps, absurdities and traumas that beset the group, which includes best friend Sulynn O'Reilly and the brothers Arthur and Bobby Gaines, as its members painstakingly steer the show through summer stock, take it on a disaster-plagued tour through rural America, struggle to off-Broadway and finally open to warm reviews on the Great White Way. But as Margo's career skyrockets, her personal life disintegrates. Her youthful marriage to Arthur is a failure; she enters a marriage of convenience with a homosexual physician and continues with an unwise love affair. Herself a former opera/musical comedy singer, first novelist Ciaccia is privy to the realities of show business and the insecurities of superstars. This is a warm and witty novel, at times etched in acid. (Apr.)