Brenda Adelman grew up in Brooklyn with a bohemian artist mother who read Shakespeare to her as a bedtime story and  a Jewish Guido dad who taught her how to drive a Cadillac at six and how to shoot a gun at ten. 

Sexy bohemian artist mom. Brooklyn Jewish wanna be Italian dad. It could have been funny. It was. Until that fateful night in October 1995. Mom was shot. Dad was jailed. His gun, the weapon never found. He quickly took a new bride, my mother's sister.