Nickel Fare

A story of gay youth coming of age in New York City in the early 1970s. Nicangelo is a young man who suddenly finds himself homeless and penniless in the city. He meets an array of characters some helpful, like the elderly drag queen Manette, and some harmful, like the perversely abusive addict Ned Hartland. In a world of Saturday Night Fever and Shaft, Nicangelo moves from a college town on Staten Island to the slums of Downtown Brooklyn, with some stops in the balconies of Times Square cinemas and the backroads of Puerto Rico along the way. A beach colony of lost hippies, a city block of incompetent gentrifiers, a charlatan preacher, a film-flam man from Missouri, a Vegas showgirl's spoiled son, and pioneers of the gay movement are the improbable guides on his journey. Although there is much hardship and a lot of shady dealing, this story is full of optimism and life. Written in the tradition of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn, Nickel Fare has a gritty realism and careful accuracy and it includes annotations explaining the 1970s scene. In this sense it functions as a social history as well as a novel. It has received high praise from other writers. Lambda Award winning author Felice Picano says, "Ambrose's gorgeous slice of life is rendered with such detailed devotion and inner accuracy that it comes out as though brand new." Gay Literature Professor and author Arnie Kantrowitz writes, "Nicangelo's odyssey reveals a whole world to the radar. It is more sordid (in a good way) than John Rechy's City of NIght but has a truth and honesty all its own." Author Roy Chaudoir says, "I liked this book so much I have to reread it to get the flavor and taste fully again, such was the delight," and Amos Lassen of Literary Pride says, "He pulls the reader in on the first page and does not let him go."