Postage Due
In Postage Due, young American millionaire Toledo Squires has a goal of assembling a team of experts who will transform Albania into a twenty-first century capitalist free market. Having sold his mutual fund analysis company to America's largest brokerage firm, he feels that for him it's "pay-back" time to society, and so he chooses Albania on which to bestow his altruistic Yankee know-how.
Yet this multi-layered roller-coaster of a novel spanning the high desert of New Mexico to the cities of London, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Tirana carries a tender humorous edge. It is also the story of Toledo's grandmother, Grace Templeton -- it's her tale of autumnal love in a retirement home where the octogenarian inhabitants are more at home around the poker table than in any communal dining room. In a denouement of the most ironic kind, it is Grace who is swept along by this wave of idealism and transformed from the queen of the cards to the Queen of Albania.
EDITORIAL REVIEWS
The Albanian-American newspaper, Illyria, September 22, 1995: Sections of the book deal with Albania's transition and its communist past. Political commentary is also plentiful in Postage Due as numerous views come about from the authors' first-hand observations about the country.
Grand Times, October, 1995: Postage Due is the story about the power of dreams. Not the unconscious dreams of sleep, but the waking dreams that can give direction to our lives, motivate our actions, and -- if we are lucky -- help us fulfill our destiny.
Gold Life, UK, March-April, 1996: A highly enjoyable read.
