Even Were There a Storm is a work of experimental non-fiction in 672 numbered fragments.
In April 1987, a late spring snowstorm struck Worcester, Massachusetts. I was nine years old. I was the kind of child who listened to Department of Public Works radio traffic on a police scanner, attentive to the city's systems in ways that now seem improbable. I have no memory of this storm. I learned of it decades later, by chance.
The book follows a sustained attempt to think through a question that discovery raised: does it matter if a person sleepwalks through events in their life?
This is not a memoir in the conventional sense. It is not a history of Worcester or an account of that storm. It is an essay--672 of them, actually--on attention, memory, presence, and what it means to have been somewhere without having been there at all.
Details
Author: Paul Fallavollita
Publisher: Independently published
Publication date: January 16, 2026
Pages: 190 (paperback) / 175 (Kindle)
ISBN-13: 979-8244268669
ASIN: B0GHLLHBDQ
Purchase
Amazon (paperback and Kindle):
https://www.amazon.com/Even-Were-There-Storm-Fallavollita/dp/B0GHLLHBDQ
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246755586-even-were-there-a-storm
About the Author
I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. I earned a B.A. in philosophy and political science from Loyola University New Orleans and an M.A. in political science from Purdue University, where I studied international relations and literary theory.
I spent my career in corporate quality assurance, compliance, and technical writing--work that formalized what was already a disposition toward institutional skepticism and close attention to whether practice matches prescription.
I live in the Upstate of South Carolina.
Contact
https://fallavollita.substack.com/
