A Brooklyn Saga

For a century, the real Williamsburg Brooklyn ("WB") was a melting-pot center for immigrants coming to America from several European countries, especially Italians. In the era of the 1950s-60s-70s, this decidedly blue-collar community mixed easy living and lofty dreams with tough times, tough economics, and tough guys working for the Mafia. In the middle of all this interchange and mayhem grew the Carpello family with their two daughters, Angelina and Jennifer (aka Angie and JJ), who,...
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For a century, the real Williamsburg Brooklyn ("WB") was a melting-pot center for immigrants coming to America from several European countries, especially Italians. In the era of the 1950s-60s-70s, this decidedly blue-collar community mixed easy living and lofty dreams with tough times, tough economics, and tough guys working for the Mafia. In the middle of all this interchange and mayhem grew the Carpello family with their two daughters, Angelina and Jennifer (aka Angie and JJ), who, like many others, watched their world change from their home stoop - that set of stairs from which life lessons were learned, street games performed, and the cycles of life, living, love, and death originated and altered residents' outlooks. Though the Carpellos are fictitious, the true-life stories strung together here play like the sweet notes of a violin or cello, steeped as they are in the real experiences of one of the co-authors, who witnessed myriad events and incidents on Conselyea Street in the heart of the Italian neighborhood. The unusual, fictitious Peter Wei, a Chinese refugee cleaning up messes for the Mob, weaves into the fabric of the WB community an engaging plot drawn from the authors' imaginations. As one reviewer put it, "(Readers) will be richer for meeting these people."Depending on reader acceptance of this volume, there may come a series of books based on "Stoop Stories."