Kitchen-sink crime drama meets tragic opera in William Boyle’s most ambitious literary crime novel yet: the story of two sisters and their neighbor whose lives are shaped through one fateful, impulsive act
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. Risa is a loving mother, a faithful wife, a saintly neighbor, as she has learned to be—but lately, her husband’s slow dive into criminality and abuse has threatened her peace, raising concerns about her and her baby’s safety. On the night her younger sister, Giulia, moves in with Risa to recover from a bad break-up, 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, dramatic expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, and Chooch grapple with the choice they make that night—and respond differently when the cracks of a supposedly seamless cover-up begin to reveal themselves.
