Revere Beach Boulevard: A Novel (Revere Beach Trilogy) - Softcover

Merullo, Roland

4.01

390 ratings by Goodreads

9780805060065: Revere Beach Boulevard: A Novel (Revere Beach Trilogy)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805060065 ISBN 13: 9780805060065

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1999

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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, the son who battles a gambling addiction for most of his adult life, it means having the courage to stand up to Eddie Crevine, a Mafia thug to whom he is in debt. For Peter's famous sister, Joanna, it means admitting that she shares some of her brother's anger at their parents and that she is no longer wholly responsible for saving him from the consequences of his gambling. For Vito, the father who hasn't ever had an easy time with his son, and Vito's wife, Lucy, it involves dealing with the aftereffects of a youthful indiscretion, a moment of unchecked passion that changes all of their lives in ways that can never be undone.

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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 expos� 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 the author of two previous novels, Leaving Losapas and A Russian Requiem. Revere Beach Boulevard is the first in a trilogy of novels. He teaches writing at Bennington College and lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

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