While Danielle Trussoni’s spellbinding novel \
While Danielle Trussoni’s spellbinding novel “The Ancestor” could be categorized as a mystery, further definition remains, well, something of a mystery. On first note, Trussoni’s novel smacks amazingly of Joyce Carol Oates’ labyrinthine 1980 novel “Bellefleur” with its unspoken family secrets. Read on, and you feel like you’re entering the world of the captivating film “Last of the Dogmen.” Read further, and you feel as though you’re living in Jean M. Auel’s “Clan of the Cave Bear.” Well, Trussoni’s novel has hints of those works but much more. “The Ancestor” is the story of Alberta “Bert” Monte, who learns that her ancestral name is Alberta Isabelle Eleanor Vittoria Montebianco, when she inherits a vast estate and castle in the shadow of Mount Blanc in the Italian Alps.
