Suzanne Corso reads from Brooklyn Story (Gallery Books, 2011)

It is the summer of 1978. Half-Jewish, half-Italian Samantha Bonti is fifteen-years-old and living in Bensonhurst with her mother Joan, a cynic scarred by a ruinous marriage and shackled with drug and alcohol addictions, and her Grandma Ruth, an opinionated source of encouragement. They survive on food stamps and welfare checks, while Samantha dreams of graduating, moving to Manhattan, and becoming a writer. But when she begins dating Tony Kroon–twenty-years-old, charismatic, and an aspiring mobster–she finds herself navigating a perilous relationship that threatens to jeopardize her hopes for a better life. Told from an adult perspective, Brooklyn Story is a true-to-life novel about finding the courage to break from the past and the strength to pursue the promise of a better future.