Revere Beach Boulevard: A Novel - Hardcover

Merullo, Roland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805060057 ISBN 13: 9780805060058

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1998

Synopsis

Vittorio (Vito) and Peter Imbesalacqua, father and son, opposites in so many ways, have never had an easy time with each other. From the moment Vito arrived in the United States from Italy in 1936 he did his best to live as a good man--hard-working, deeply-religious, frugal and honest. Peter, on the other hand, now forty years old, his real-estate business in shambles, has bent the rules and battled a gambling addiction for most of his adult life. With his family's help, he always just succeeded in averting disaster, until now. Revere Beach Boulevard--a novel both literary and suspenseful--tells the story of a family that rallies around an errant son, even as a dark secret that has blighted all their lives comes to the surface. For Peter it means having the courage to stand up to Eddie Crevine, a Mafia thug to whom he is in debt and who now threatens his life. For Peter's sister, Joanna, it means admitting that she shares some of her brother's anger at their parents. For Vito and his wife, Lucy, it involves dealing with the aftereffects of a youthful indiscretion, a moment of unchecked passion that changed all of their lives in ways that can never be undone. Revere Beach Boulevard is a rich and heartfelt novel that looks deeply into the secret places in men and women's hearts, places only great fiction can reveal.

About this title

Review

Forget Michael Corleone and the sexy, sinister underworld of Mario Puzo's Godfather. In Revere, Massachusetts, the face of the Mob is Eddie Crevine, a loan shark with a taste for brutality: "Eddie Creviniello ... out in the middle of Tapley Avenue on a summer night like this. A man laying down near his feet, and Eddie swinging a piece of two-by-four down hard against the man's knees, over and over, like somebody digging a ditch with an ax." This wise guy preys, not on other mobsters, but on the blue-collar denizens of his own Italian American neighborhood, and chief among his targets is Peter Imbesalacqua, a 40-year-old real estate agent whose business has gone south and whose penchant for high-stakes gambling has spiraled out of control.

As if being in debt to the mob weren't bad enough, Peter's family life is a shambles. His mother is dying, his father distraught, and his sister, a television reporter in Boston, has decided to run an exposé on Eddie Crevine, putting all their lives in jeopardy. In Revere Beach Boulevard, author Roland Merullo has all the makings of a top- notch suspense novelist, but it becomes apparent from the first page that crime and punishment are a secondary concern in this story. As Father Dom, the family priest and chronicler of four crucial days in the Imbesalacqua family's life, points out, this story is, at heart, about "the mystery of love, the way we stretch towards it with such persistent optimism, always falling short of our imaginings and always bringing forth new visions in their emptied places."

About the Author

Roland Merullo is author of two previous novels, Leaving Losapas and A Russian Requiem. He teaches writing at Bennington College and lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0805060057
• ISBN 13: 9780805060058
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320