In the Shadow of the Bridge: A Memoir - Hardcover

Joseph Caldwell is an acclaimed playwright and novelist who was awarded the Rome Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of five novels in addition to The Pig Trilogy, a humorous mystery series featuring a crime-solving pig. Caldwell lives in New York City.

“A tender memoir. [The] story of love and loss is told with earnestness and wit.”  (Publishers Weekly)

“In telling the story of coming to NYC as a young man, grappling with his desire to be an artist, to be a man of faith, and his desire for the love of another man, Joseph Caldwell tells the story of a time and place—the story of a generation.” (A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven)

“Joseph Caldwell’s intimate portrait of gay life in New York City before Stonewall is an important addition to LGBTQ history. Caldwell is a compassionate and accomplished storyteller, and his memoir of a life well and fully lived is a book to treasure.”  (Peter Cameron, author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You)

Praise for Joseph Caldwell: “Caldwell writes a deceptively simple prose, without decoration, metaphor, or simile. He is well worth reading now and watching for in the future.” (Doris Grumbach, New York Times Book Review on In Such Dark Places)

“A novel with such brio that it could be the basis for a half-comedic, half-tragic grand opera ... Bravo, Uncle!” (The New York Times on The Uncle from Rome)

“The Uncle from Rome is a dazzling tour de force, deftly melding the exaggerated passions of grand opera with the techniques of contemporary fiction, the novel kept buoyant by the humor inherent in the hero’s predicament.” (The Los Angeles Times on The Uncle from Rome)

“Joseph Caldwell’s The Pig Did It is a mischievous, even devious, wallow in a thoroughly Irish mire of love, loss, murder, and redemption, with a prescient porker, frothy pints, errant darts, and even a little plagiarism of the classics thrown in for good measure.” (Bob Gray, Shelf Awareness, on The Pig Did It)

“ . . . very funny . . . Caldwell’s shaggy pig story, the first of a projected trilogy, puts farcical doings into lilting language and provides a payoff that is as unexpected as it is satisfying.” (Publishers Weekly on The Pig Did It)