Rosa Salvatore is a nice Italian girl who lusts after beautiful shoes, junk food, and the one sensitive man with whom she can share the sad story of her life. Gary Fisher, a nice Jewish boy studying law at Yale, has a big mouth, a great butt, and more than enough angst of his own. In him Rosa thought she caught a momentary glimpse of something that would help her understand the world - surpass it, even.

But the not-so-nice illness that comes between them threatens to destroy their shaky faith in each other, not to mention their faith in God and the universe. Rosa loves Gary like a big war. When the guns fall silent, what will be left?

Perfectly capturing life's everyday ironies and the small moments of recognition that loom large in hindsight, Blue Italian traces Rosa's courtship and brief marriage to a man who gets on her nerves the first day she sets eyes on him.

We are drawn into the separate worlds of their childhoods: Pizza Beach, the working-class Italian neighborhood where women hang their tattered dishrags on the line like so many flags of surrender; where Rosa's father keeps a photo of Mussolini tacked up in the garage and Rosa's mother goes to church so often she might as well sleep there.

We visit the affluent bedroom communities of Long Island, where the Lincoln Town Car rules the expressway and Gary's socially ambitious mother Mimi gets her face lifted on a seasonal basis, and finally we get a peek at Artie Fisher, whose complete adoration of his son proves the power - despite its limitations - of human love.