“The women were women then. They stuck up for each other. A matriarchy. My aunt yelled a lot like the boss. My mother, more quiet, kept the peace, behind the scenes, pulling the strings.”

The Train Runner

Medford Square 1946 - Photo credit: Medford Historical Society

Featured Works

  • The Train Runner

    This story follows a young boy’s expulsion from parochial school, gambling, stealing, selling discarded wares for pennies, interludes with burlesque dancers at the Old Howard Theatre, and surviving the sanguinary streets of Boston during the Great Depression.

    The Train Runner is an autofiction project and a collaboration with my 96-year-old father, a first-generation Italian-American born in East Boston in 1928; his parents emigrated from Sicily. He describes his father as friendly and his mother as formidable. The characters and events are inspired by my father's unconventional childhood, growing up in Medford and its complicated ties to the Mafia.

  • The Edge of the Sun

    1991 – British-American human rights attorney Isabel Pope is captured by Bosnian rebels and imprisoned with a Serbian ex-captain and newfound love. As Isabel fights for her life, she discovers a web of corruption, lies, and hidden agendas that threaten to destroy everything she holds dear. With enemies closing in from all sides, she must confront her own demons and decide how far she's willing to go for justice. If she survives.

    * * *

    A contemporary historical fiction novel set in the former Yugoslavia, this story is based on actual events of the Bosnian War and my stays in the region that spanned seven years from 1990 through 1996.

  • An Accidental Pilgrim's Tale

    Taken from my travel journals, An Accidental Pilgrim's Tale tells the story of a month-long overseas journey with my mother in tow for her to fulfill a dream pilgrimage in the Balkans, followed by a rattled stay with relatives in the tiny Italian village where her father was born and raised.

    First scribbled on the pages of my journal, entitled, “Un mese con mia madre,” are scenes filled with humor, humility, and heartache. If you’ve ever globetrotted with your untraveled mother to foreign countries, then you capisce. Between the mountains and memories, what began as daughterly duty unfolded into a chronicle of tangled roots and revelations.