by James Lepore
“What about you?” Jay asked Dunn.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Lorrie and I are moving down here. I’m going into the private eye business with Angelo and Gary Shaw.”
“When did this happen?”
“Today. We made the deal right after you got married.”
“Right in the church?”
“We thought it would be lucky.”
Jay smiled. Shaw had framed the sling he had worn on his right arm for two months, on which he had signed his name inside a big heart, and given it to Jay and Isabel as a wedding present. He and his wife, Michele, were watching the picture-taking antics, drinks in hand. Next to them were Isabel’s childhood friend Hector and his wife.
Hearing a slight buzz, Jay, Dunn, and Angelo turned to see Sam Perna coming onto the patio from the dining room carrying two buckets of ice, with a bottle of champagne in each. Four waiters followed with more champagne on ice and trays of fluted glasses. They cleared a table and set the buckets and glasses down. Then Sam popped a bottle and began pouring. The waiters followed suit until thirty or so glasses were fizzing on the white-clad table. Isabel walked over to stand beside Jay, murmuring “mi amado” as she took his hand.
“A toast,” said Sam. “Who wants to make a toast?”
“You,” someone yelled.
“Not me,” Sam said, “I got marbles in my mouth.”
“I will,” said Sister Josefina.
The guests, who had been gathering around the champagne table reaching for glasses, turned to see who had volunteered, and then began to make way for the nun, who was wearing her headpiece and a pale blue dress and white shoes that she and Isabel had shopped for the day before. She lifted a glass and looked for Jay and Isabel. Finding them, she raised it.
“May the good Lord bless you,” she said. “May Our Lady of Guadalupe watch over you. And—orphans no more—may you be surrounded by your family always, as you are today.”
Thank you for reading Blood of My Brother, a novel that allowed me as I wrote it (and re-wrote it numerous times) to explore many things: the child shaping the man, the loss of loved ones, human cruelty, and the forces that compel us to either live or die in the face of despair. When we don’t have to choose, life is easy, or seems to be; when we do, it can become very difficult. Danny, Jay and Isabel made choices: Danny’s led to his death, Jay and Isabel’s to love.
The characters in my next novel, Sons and Princes, also face difficult choices. The brothers Chris and Joseph Massi, and the beautiful heroin addict, Michele Mathias, are each haunted by a past that refuses to loosen its terrible grip, until the moment arrives for each of them to choose.
Sons and Princes is the third novel in my Tristate Trilogy, three stand-alone novels whose central characters are from the New York--New Jersey--Connecticut area, novels whose connection is thematic: the forces that shape our lives, the consequences of our decisions, and the crucibles that forge our destinies.
—James LePore
Venice, Florida
April, 2010
Sons and Princes goes on sale in November 2010 wherever books are sold.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
The Story Plant
The Aronica-Miller Publishing Project, LLC
P.O. Box 4331
Stamford, CT 06907
Copyright © 2010 by James LePore
eISBN : 978-1-611-88000-7
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All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by US Copyright Law. For information, address The Story Plant.
First Story Plant Printing: December 2010