The year is 1960 and the place is the Bronx. All twelve-year-old Ricky Davis wants to do is play stickball with his friends and flirt with the building super’s daughter. But when his father crosses gangster Nathan Glucksman and goes into hiding, Ricky has to take over his father’s bookie business and figure out a way to pay back his debt—before the gangsters make good on their threats. Meanwhile, Ricky’s mother, Pearl, a fading beauty of failed dreams, plots to raise the money by embezzling funds from one of her boss’s clients: Elizabeth Taylor. Fast-paced, engrossing and full of heart, The Bookie’s Son paints the picture of a family forced to decide just how much they’re willing to sacrifice for each other—and at what cost.
I grew up in a world that no longer exists: The Bronx 1947-1960. My father cut ladies' dresses in the garment center while moonlighting as a bookie and smuggler of tax free cigarettes. My mother was the legal secretary to the top theatrical lawyer in New York. Both gambled compulsively.
When I was 10 I started taking bets for my father while he was at work. My almost-blind-and-deaf grandmother and I would fight for the phone. When she answered, she scribbled down what she thought she had heard on a Wesson-oil stained napkin. My father would be furious: he couldn't read her illegible writing, or make sense of who placed which bets or how much they were for.
I always wanted to be a writer. In my early twenties I was selected as a fellow to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. My nonfiction book, Becoming: An American Odyssey, was published by Saturday Review Press. To make a living I worked various day jobs: tree planter and assistant librarian; organic orange and olive farmer; school bus driver; Zamboni driver; editor; stock broker; power transformer tube winder; and tennis pro. For the past thirty some-odd years I've been a custom builder in the Boston area.
I've been writing The Bookie's Son on and off for forty years. While managing the custom building company where I work and raising my two children, I gave up writing for a couple of decades. When the children didn't need me to coach their soccer teams anymore I returned to writing. The Bookie's Son, based on my childhood, was still the story I wanted to tell.
I'm slowly transitioning out of construction and becoming a full-time writer. I play competitive table tennis three times a week, mentor a ten-year old boy every other week, and take care of my grandson one day a week. He fills that day with joy.
