The Pope of Brooklyn

(Paperback)

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Description

Joseph Di Prisco's anticipated memoir brings the hustler, gambler, criminal, bookmaker, and confidential informerJoe's fatherback to life, and reveals the fascinating and unsettling truths that simultaneously bound and separated father and son. On the street they called him Pope, and he made his bones in Brooklyn during the '50s and '60s when Joe was a kid and had more questions about his dad than he would dare ask. Later, when Di Prisco accidentally discovered fifty-year-old transcripts of New York State Appellate Division trials, where his dad was the star witness against corrupt NYPD copscops with whom he collaboratedPope's hazardous, veiled, twisted past was finally illuminated. The Pope of Brooklyn is both sequel and prequel to his much-praised memoir, Subway to California. Enlightened by these disclosures, Di Prisco flawlessly traces how secrets once revealed led to even deeper mysteries both for himself and for the reader.

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"A literary son traces his fugitive father in a pulpy yet cerebral memoir. . . This sprawling narrative is punctuated by Di Prisco's reflections on literature, faith, mortality, and his own tangled romances and outr experiences, ranging from cocaine addiction to mentoring adolescents...Deft, amusing, and tough.

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Author Bio

Joseph Di Prisco was born in Brooklyn and lives today in Northern California, with his wife, photographer Patti James. He's the author of the novels All for Now, The Alzhammer, The Confessions of Brother Eli, and Sun City, books of poems, and books about childhood and adolescence. The Pope of Brooklyn is the follow-up to his previous memoir, Subway to California.