Heart of the Old Country

Basis for the major motion pictureThe Narrows, starring Kevin Zegers, Vincent D’Onofrio, Sophia Bush, and Eddie Cahill.
―Selected by the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program
“Stolid suspense from the land of the wiseguys.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Sweet, sardonic, and by turns hilarious and tragic.” ―Publishers Weekly
Heart of the Old Country is a guided tour of the ethnic enclaves of South Brooklyn. Not the Brooklyn of Spike Lee or Matty Rich, but a counterpoint, where the hangers-on―those left behind in the white flight to the suburbs―continue to “do business” while defending their shrinking borders.

Nineteen-year-old Mike is at loose ends: driving a beat-up Buick for Big Lou’s Car Service and trying to decide whether he should remain a college student, marry his high school girlfriend, work full-time, or drift into the lucrative and omnipresent arena of local organized crime. Enter Nicky Shades, schoolyard hero turned junkie, just out of rehab and also driving for Lou. Nicky and Mike rekindle their uneven friendship as Nicky attempts the difficult path of sobriety. But old habits, especially Nicky’s, are hard to break.

One night, stoned to the gills, Nicky robs a social club where the local don operates. Mike’s life is changed forever as he’s forced to confront the grim realities of wiseguy justice and his own culpability in its execution. Although his father has spent his life walking the line between respectability and old loyalties as a small-time bookmaker, Mike knows that his own options are more extreme. He is either passing through this world or he will be defined by it.

Heart of the Old Country offers an honest, unromantic look at Brooklyn’s underclass, and the novel’s dark, politically incorrect humor reflects the attitudes of these old-country inhabitants with unencumbered truthfulness and deep affection.