Now available as an e-Book or paperback at Amazon
The King of Kreskin Avenue is the powerful tale of the connection between Mario Colucci, a highly decorated, emotionally scarred Korean War hero who’s the neighborhood oddity, and a sixteen-year-old neighborhood kid, Robbie Shumstein, trying to come to grips with the death of his brother in Vietnam.
Set in Buffalo, NY over a 30-year time frame, the story’s dramatic climax occurs in the late 1960’s against the background of a Jewish/Italian lower middle-class neighborhood with its own life and personality. With the gentle guidance and wisdom of Mario’s wife Mattie, a former combat nurse, and the assistance of a Don McIntyre, a conscientious objector, the King and Robbie put their demons to rest by setting a pipeline in motion that ultimately saves the lives of hundreds of young men.
This beautifully written debut novel exposes the anger, polarization and chaos of the time, and the consequences when a country’s moral compass fails and needs to be re-balanced by men, a woman and a boy of conscience
