Lights Out in Paradise

Paul Salvo's Lights Out in Paradise is that blend of autobiography and fiction that draws readers in and holds them long after the final page. This coming-of-age novel is also a fascinating sociological study of a neighborhood slipping into a slow, painful demise. Young Cosmo has survived a harrowing sail from Sicily to New York, where he becomes friends with Rocco, who is American born and part of a mafia family. Moving through the 1950s and then 1960s, the boys grow into manhood, two very different personae making a life in Bushwick, one of Brooklyn's working-class neighborhoods moving toward the abyss of urban decay. Salvo digs into the hearts of his characters, juxtaposing their lives and struggles against social mores, Vietnam, and an Italian community facing the influx of African Americans and Puerto Ricans. This is a novel about change-fighting it and adjusting to it-and how two boys become young men desperate to find their place in a world that is increasingly dangerous and alien.