Sicilian Culture: The News: Paradise Salvage Book Review

Sicilian Culture

The People, The History, The Culture

The News & Views
Paradise Salvage Book Review
By John Fusco
All my young life summer had been mine to catch and release, like an endless vein of sunfish. Now it was out of my grip; I had hooked something deep in the gills under muddy water and it was pulling me with it.
Twelve-year-old Nunzio's innocence is lost forever when he opens the boot of a wrecked Pontiac Bonneville in his father's junkyard. But who will believe the tale of the horror that he found there when all evidence is lost to the Paradise Salvage crusher?
In a family of Italian-American eccentrics, Danny Boy alone is persuaded by his younger brother's implausible claim. Enlisting the help of their father's renegade cousin, Angelo -- a quadriplegic ex-cop with a dark history of his own -- they embark on a bizarre and dangerous trail through the underbelly of small-town America, in a journey that proves to be as much one of personal discovery as an unravelling of the mystery behind the corpse at Paradise Salvage.
Drawing on his own childhood experience as part of the passionate Italian American community, John Fusco has written a beautifully intricate, lyrical tale of mystery and suspense. It is a story of innocence lost and justice found; of ambition frustrated and dreams realised; and of the love, and the difference, between generations of a family struggling to reconcile the traditions of the past with the demands of the present.
Synopsis
1979, "the last true summer of my boyhood", and Nunzio is helping out in the family-owned scrapyard. Inside the boot of a wrecked Pontiac he finds a man's body holding some beads. By the time the alarm is raised the car is in the crusher and the only evidence left is a few beads and a spent bullet.
About the Author
Prior to becoming an award-winning screenwriter, John Fusco left high school early to work variously as a factory machinist, sawmill hand, motorcycle seat upholsterer and travelling blues musician.
After graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, he went on to write and produce eight major motion pictures. He lives with his wife and son on their stud farm in Vermont.
Some early reviews:
PARADISE SALVAGE is the best coming-of-age novel I've read since The Catcher in the Rye. A taut and original thriller and an unsentimental evocation of a special time and place. Best of all, every last sentence is written from and to the heart."
'Paradise Salvage is a true portmanteau novel - it's an elegy, a celebration, a rite of passage, an exploration of the roots of family, loyalty and love. But it's also a suspense-driven thriller that packs in humour, pathos, fear and a rare generosity of spirit. It's that rare things - a genuine thriller that also warms the heart.' VAL McDERMID 'A rich Italian/American social stew that rings true: vivid, atmospheric, and full of real-life dialogue...something found in all too few books nowadays' PETER MAYLE, author of A YEAR IN PROVENCE.

HOME

News & Views || People || History || Region || Language || Food || Cinema || Links || Contact Info