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Life is Gray: A Story of Love, Pain, War & The Enduring Human Spirit
Carl Turco
Paperback. Infinity Publishing 2010-10-01.
ISBN 9780741462008
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Buy from Amazon.co.uk
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Publisher description
This historical novel has events and figures that have roots in real-life headlines, regarding organized crime and Vietnam; examples: the Pizza Connection USA-wide drug network that was prosecuted in the 1980s; the career and demise of the Dapper Don, John Gotti; Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and the widespread atrocities. Below is the pitch for this 540-page epic:
If Marco had remained in Italy and did not move to Brooklyn, N.Y., he would not have fought in the Vietnam War, and he would not have met his love, beautiful and sensual Francesca, whom twice, inadvertently almost caused is demise. Yes, Marco's destiny would have been different if he did not go to live in America.
Marco's gentle soul had a passion for love and music. He aspired to become a concert pianist and found solace from his heart-wrenching relationship with Francesca, in the piano music of Chopin and Beethoven.
Although Marco detested violence, he was always confronted by it: at home, by an abusive father and in the streets, by bullies. Marco had a phobia for fist fighting that gave him recurring nightmares. He tried to avoid violence. But in Bushwick, trouble was always coming his way. Marco and his friends got muscular and fought back against those that would usurp their dignity. But the boys did not know that, in a few years, the violence they lived in the streets of New York City would be paled by the horrors they would live in America's first, made-for-TV, Rock & Roll War. Marco and his friends had various roles in Vietnam: Joe was an infantry platoon leader; Gino, helicopter combat pilot; Tony was a tunnel rat. Some of the boys made it back from Vietnam. Others did not.
In the early 1960s, when Marco and his friends were growing up in Brooklyn, the American public thought that the Mafia had died with Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Marco and his friends lived with the Mafia, but they did not know it, due to the Mafia's oath of omerta, broken by Joe Valacci in 1963. Marco was almost killed by a Mob rising star, due to his heart-wrenching relationship with Francesca, the sister of Carlo The Bull Giordano, who opposed their love and wanted to keep his sister pure, so that he could marry her to a high-ranking member of the Organization. But unknown to Marco, Mafia management saved his life.
In Vietnam, Marco met Felix Lopez, who came from the Bronx projects. Although their ethnicities were different, they had a lot in common; not only because they both had suffered discrimination, but because they were both desperately and hopelessly in love. Felix could not fulfill his love for Thien Lan because the North Vietnamese Communists raided Vietnamese villages and interned people in concentration camps that were worse than the Nazi camps. Felix fought many odds to be reunited with Thien Lan
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Life is Gray: A Story of Love, Pain, War & The Enduring Human Spirit
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