Valeria's Last Stand

Book excerpt: Don't miss Marc Fitten's newest book, Elza's Kitchen, available in July, 2012. When it comes to the sizes of fishes and ponds, Valeria is a whale in a thimble. She harrumphs her daily way through her backwater Hungarian village, finding equal fault with the new, the old, the foreign and the familiar. Her decades of universal contempt have turned her into a touchstone of her little community - whatever she scorns the least must be the best, after all. But, on a day like any other, her spinster's heart is struck by an unlikely arrow: the village potter, long-known and little-noticed, captures her fancy, and Valeria finds herself suddenly cast in a new role she never expected to play. This one deviation from character, this one loose thread, is all it takes for the delicately woven fabric of village life to unravel. And, for the first time in a long time, Valeria couldn't care less. Valeria's Last Stand is a joyfully wise small-town satire that takes an hilariously honest look at later-in-life romance and the notion that it's never too late to start anew.