It's been a long time since area native Kay Rush lived in Milwaukee, but she's never forgotten about her hometown.
Rush, who now lives in France, spent much of the past 27 years living in Italy, where she has worked as a journalist, a model, a certified sommelier, a broadcast personality, an actress and now a novelist.
Rush's first book, "Il seme del desiderio" ("The Seed of Desire"), has been published by a major publishing house in Italy and, folks who know her will be unsurprised that Milwaukee features heavily in the book, which is rooted in her own story about a young woman moving to Europe to seek new challenges, but, she says, the novel is just that: fiction.
We recently asked her, via e-mail from France, about the novel, about her long and varied career and about Milwaukee, where she still has family.
OMC: Tell me a bit about growing up in Milwaukee? Where did you live and where did you go to school?
KR: My mother is Japanese, she came to the United States in 1959 and she raised my brother, Michael, and I on her own. She is my heroine! We grew up in the housing projects, Parklawn, where I have only fond memories. One day, I plan to write a book about life in the projects in the sixties. (A) great place to grow up, as long as you can leave one day! My mother later remarried a man by the name of Karl Sandvick, whom I consider my father. My brother is a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department.
I went to grade school at Congress, junior high at John Muir, high school at Custer and I did one year at UWM, where I first began to study to be a writer.
I left Milwaukee when I was 18 years old to go to New York, then to Paris and within the same year - 1980 -- I ended up in Italy where I have been ever since. I became a journalist, I wrote and hosted numerous television and radio programs in Italy and later in Spain where I lived for four years. I now reside in Milan, Italy and in Chamonix, France.
OMC: Is your family still here? Do you get back here much?
KR: Yes, my family still lives in Milwaukee. I don't get back to Milwaukee very often because it's so far away and my parents prefer coming to Europe to see me.
I returned to Milwaukee to get married in 2003 at Atonement Lutheran Church. My husband is Spanish and his name is Ismael. He was a professional basketball player in Europe until he met me and ‘discovered' the mountains -- I mountain climb -- that's how we ended up living in the French Alps.
OMC: What do you think of the city you see here now? Is it hard to imagine it was the same place you left?
KR: I think Milwaukee has improved greatly. America's best kept secret. Every time I go back, I am more and more impressed at what has been done. As a teenager, I was always hanging out on the East Side of the city and that is still my favorite area to go to when I return. I love the Calatrava addition to the museum! And what's been done to the Third Ward and the Milwaukee River is quite impressive. Many scenes in my novel, "The Seed of Desire," take place in Milwaukee and I mention all of few of these areas. The main character in my book is an Italian-American born in Milwaukee.
I guess you could call it my tribute to the city of my birth. I wish it were closer because I would certainly return more often.
OMC: Growing up did you ever dream of leaving Milwaukee? Could you have imagined the life you've had since you moved to Europe?
KR: Yes, yes, yes. I think I was born with the travel bug. And although Milwaukee is surrounded by total flatland, I yearned to live in the mountains. Italy and France were always in my mind and even as a young girl, I recall buying many of the foreign magazines to check out what was happening in Europe. I remember skipping out of school one day and taking a bus to Chicago because I had heard about the Fiorucci store opening up and I had to see it!
I have always been fascinated by different cultures and languages and my travels have taken me to all parts of the world. At the moment, my favorite area to travel is the Himalayas, especially India and Nepal.
OMC: Tell me a bit about leaving? When did you go and what led you away?
New York was not my kind of town and I must admit I still don't like it that much. I survived - barely -- about six months before I finally got a job doing photographs for a catalog, which earned me enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Paris. I was still 18 years old, I didn't know where I was going, where I would sleep or what I would do and, I didn't speak French. But I loved Paris and I was finally in Europe so although I was living the bohemian life, I was very happy.
The road has not always been smooth, but it has been interesting and since I'm still here talking about it, one can conclude that all turned out for the best.
And how did you come to write this novel?
Having studied Creative Writing many moons ago, I have always dreamed of writing a novel but I just got sidetracked with real life for a long time. Many times it's what you yearn for most in life that fills you with the greatest fear of failure. I finally got over that fear and, in fact, I am now finishing the first draft of my second novel and I have ideas for many more!
The idea for this specific novel, which deals with a very sensitive subject -- artificial insemination -- came to me in a very turbulent time in Italian history about infertility assistance. You see, until 2003 there were no laws for this practice in Italy; it was a total free-for-all. I found this shocking and, to make matters worse, the law they finally came up with was incomplete and unfair to the Italian women. This not only surprised me but it angered me, also. At the same time, four of my very dear girlfriends were trying desperately to have a baby; each of them lived in a different European country and each of them had to resort to IVF. That is how I became familiar with the anguish and sorrow that goes along with this quest.
My book talks about an Italian-American woman from Milwaukee, Sandra Caputo, who, after graduating from University, goes to live and work in Milan, Italy during the late ‘70s, ‘80s. She is very powerful and successful in her career but not so in her personal life. She decides she wants a child, and is not aware of the lawlessness in Italy regarding reproductive assistance clinics. She is fortunate to get pregnant on the first try.
She then decides to return to the United States to raise the child. As intelligent as she is and as strong-willed, she never musters up the courage to tell her daughter how she was conceived and, as they say in Italian, "lies have short legs." Sandra lives an apparently idyllic life back in her hometown, Milwaukee, with her daughter, Sonia, and her mother. As a high school graduation gift to Sonia, her grandmother -- who is also in the dark about the truth behind Sonia's birth -- gives her and Sandra tickets to go back to Italy. And this is where the story really begins.
Are you looking for a U.S. publisher?
Of course it would be my dream to publish it in the language I wrote it in. Even though my Italian is fluent, I still prefer to write in English. I do not as yet have a publisher in the United Stares but my agent is working on it now. I am keeping my fingers crossed.
How was the response to it in Italy?
The response was excellent, I'm pleased to say! I have opened a Web site with many of the quotes about my book, interviews and articles that were written. I'm sorry they're all in Italian. Anyone who has lived in Italy knows that it is very difficult to change your career and be accepted. The Italians rarely change their profession. It's a cultural thing, where as in the United States, one can be a professor one day and grow a rose garden the next and be accepted and praised for his or her courage to change. In Italy, it is not so that is why I have very pleased that the Italian public has accepted me as a novelist now.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
