Now in paperback, a dazzling coming-of-age debut about a teenage girl growing up in 1970s Brooklyn who falls in love with a handsome aspiring mobsterinspired by the author's life and soon to be a movie. It's the summer of 1978, and Samantha Bonti is fifteen years old, half Jewish and half Italian, living in Bensonhurst with her mother, Joan, a woman scarred by a ruinous marriage, poisoned with cynicism, and shackled by addictions; and with her Grandma Ruth, Samantha's loudest source of encouragement. As flawed as they are, they are family. In this close-knit community of ancestors and traditions, Samantha develops a desire to become a writer and to escape the destiny that is assumed for all of them in the outer reaches of Bensonhurst. And it's to be had just across the Brooklyn Bridge. Then comes Tony Kroon. Older than Samantha, Tony is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, half-Sicilian, half-Dutch mobster wannabe. Almost immediately, Samantha is falling in love, even when she's warned never to ask questions of Tony's life. Even when her family and friends tell her to stay away. Unable to resist Tony's seductive charms, Samantha soon finds herself swallowed up by dangerous circumstances that threaten to jeopardize more than her dreams. Told from the adult perspective, this is a powerful, true-to-life novel of leaving the past to history and the future to fateof restoring hope where there was none, and reaching for dreams in an inspiring promise of paradise called Manhattan.

Suzanne Corso is the author of Brooklyn Story and The Suite Life, as well as two feature film screenplays. She has also produced two documentaries and written one children’s book. She currently lives in New York City.