Jack of Hearts

What it is like growing up in New York in the late forties, when street gangs ruled their territories by force, and the difference between good and evil was evident when a young girl falls in love with the leader of a gang.  A little bit of crime, romance, and altercations between those gangs, and the hopes and trials of teens struggling to be true to themselves or be the person that others think they should be.

It is the late 1940s and the last summer before Toby Cerino, leader of the One-eyed Jacks, graduates and enlists in the service. He plans to hang out with his buddies all summer, but fate had other ideas. At summer's end, he would have fallen in love with Mila, almost died at the hands of his enemy, Red Flannery,leader of the Comets, attend the funeral of one of his closest friends, and when he seeks revenge, lose Mila because of who he was, leaving him to decide whether to go on with his life as planned, or change.

I was born in New York City, and my great ambition was to tell stories with a quality as interesting as those authors  whose books I loved reading.  The first novel was about my life as a teen in New York, with a slant toward the trials of teens growing up in the late 1940's with a world uneasy within itself and a pending war.