Russell grew up in a Mafia family in Newark, New Jersey. These are some of his memories.
An intricate tale of the streets, the memoirs of a kid reared on the edge of the feared Mafia, by award-winning author, Russell A. Vassallo. A startling departure from his animal-related stories, Streetwise is the ultimate memoir.
Before he was forty, the author had risked his own life to save a friend from hit men. His was a divided code of loyalty and silence to his family and friends who skirted the treacherous borders of gangsterism. Serious at times, hilarious at others, he paints the underworld with glowing strokes of his early life. A can't-pt-it-down book.
Professional Reviews
Powerful - by Richard Blake
Powerful writing, and Amazing Memoir, Poignant and Nostalgic
Intimate Account by Penny Woods
Russell Vassallo's Streetwise, an intimate account of the Mafia, is an eye-opening look into a world few of us know. Instead of focusing solely on the sensational mob violence depicted by movies and television, Vassallo tells of strong "family" ties, loyalty and respect, and how it felt to grow up as part of this tightly knit family. Though he fairly discusses the darker side of the Mafia as well, he uses these stories to expose the personalities and hurts of those involved in carrying out the bosses' orders causing his reader to look past the crime itself.
A raw in your face story of teenage love, lust, murder, and revenge set in the Bronx in the early seventies, where the cold business world of organize crime melds with the brutality of street gang warlords that ignites a winner takes all battle for u
An eye-opening look into the world of human trafficking. Pilar thought she was destined to die until she met Becky. A fairy tale ending to this story with the help of Tess is called Justice. It was time for someone to hit back because the courts in S
PI novel set in Manhattan during the 1980s when art galleries and model agencies were the two most glamorous businesses in the world. Dangerously well written.
Read Chapter 1 here: https://www.lit4u.com/art-and-beauty-chapter-1/
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