The Distant Whisper

' In his first novel, Finding Marco, author Ken Cancellara describes how, after years of corporate activity, the novel’s protagonist (Mark Gentile) has a personal 'awakening' in realizing that his ambition for material success has overshadowed his need for happiness and a life of ethics and morality. Sun-drenched memories of life as it once was in Gentile’s hometown of Acerenza, Italy (which corresponds to the author’s birthplace) call him back to reconnect with his roots and with the simple life he had left behind some half a century earlier. In Acerenza, Gentile took the lessons given to him, as a child, by his grandfather and succeeds in finding a balance between material ambition and more reflective ethics. After long reflection Gentile contemplates the possibility of a permanent move to Italy. In his poetic and eloquent sequel 'The Distant Whisper', the author continues to quell the turbulence in his soul, caused by the continuing struggle between two competing forces: the compulsion of a life driven by raw ambition and the need for a life framed by morality. He takes the reader through an odyssey of beautiful descriptions of the Italian countryside in places such as Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi and Ravello along the Amalfi coast and of the Southern Italians who inhabit that beautiful corner of the world. While continuing to bask in this indescribable beauty, the protagonist is being slowly pulled back to the corporate life he had left behind in North America. It was as if a 'distant whisper' was now summoning him back to wipe away the greed of its Chairman of the corporation he had abandoned, and to attempt to pull it back from the brink. Author Cancellara’s recounting of the corporate manoeuvres to save the company could only have been described so realistically by a person who had had hands-on experience as a business attorney and as an executive for many years. But will Mark Gentile’s soul finally find peace in the end? Will he return permanently to his place a birth-the place where he had his epiphany? Or will that 'distant whisper' that brought him back to his adopted homeland of Canada compel him to stay? 'Finding a balance between societally-imposed ambitions and a more reflective way of life is the internal struggle that more and more of us will be facing both by our younger generations as they become disillusioned with the pressures of maintaining career obligations and our aging populations as they enter the more mature and reflective periods in their lives. '