His entry begins:
I've been rereading Leah Carroll's memoir Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory, and Murder. Carroll tells the story of her mother's murder and her father's descent into alcoholism and depression and, in doing so, she gives her parents back their humanity, making them more than just the tragedies that befell them, and she also tells her own story, how her parents are her, how she's them. I use this book every semester in the true crime class I teach, and I reread it every single time. I guess I've been...[read on]About Saint of the Narrows Street, from the publisher:
As an Italian American family's decades-old secret begins to unravel, they will have to bear the consequences—and face each other—in this thrilling southern Brooklyn-set tragic opera of the highest caliber from crime fiction luminary William Boyle.Visit William Boyle's website.
Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby,Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot.
The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav's childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher "Chooch" Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this.
Over the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives.
My Book, The Movie: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.
The Page 69 Test: Gravesend and The Lonely Witness.
The Page 69 Test: City of Margins.
My Book, The Movie: City of Margins.
Q&A with William Boyle.
The Page 69 Test: Shoot the Moonlight Out.
My Book, The Movie: Shoot the Moonlight Out.
Writers Read: William Boyle (December 2021).
The Page 69 Test: Saint of the Narrows Street.
My Book, The Movie: Saint of the Narrows Street.
Writers Read: William Boyle.
--Marshal Zeringue
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