THE MERCURY MAN is a collection of thirty-six memoir narratives about growing up on the streets of Brooklyn in an Italian working-class family in the 1950s and early '60s with his doo-wop singing, gang fighting, sexually provocative, and drug abusing crew. In this intimate collection, Frank Gioia shines a light on the offbeat, unusual, and destructive with the sounds and texture of an earlier time and place.
"Frank Gioia is a stylistic writer in league with such greats as Raymond Chandler and Damon Runyon, the success of his work measured not solely by plot and story, but intriguingly by the authentic rhythms of his discourse. Read "Food for Thought" and feel the pain of a boy's heartbreak over his father's infidelity. Or, "Fat Boy" and remember the humiliation of rejection. THE MERCURY MAN is a singular work of art."—Joan Embree, author of
Summer of the Stolen Dog
"With this irresistible collection of stories, Frank Gioia drags you into the past he lived and that hasn't let him go. His characters glow with incandescence amid scenarios that cut with the sharpness of the blade initiating him into his gang, the Halsey Bops. We follow the tough-talking Catholic kid shooting pool with his guys and abandoned by his heartbreaking dad, THE MERCURY MAN. This was his world. The bitter and the poisonous, but also the sweet. He doesn't hold back, and we are the richer for it."—Padme Lake, author of (as Amy Tanner)
The Virgin of Hopeless Causes
"Frank Gioia's collection of short narratives, THE MERCURY MAN, recreates his coming of age in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn in the 1950s and the year he spent in Vietnam in the 1960s. Gioia's stories are slices of life served up skillfully in an authentic and astute, streetwise voice that take us on a journey of remembrance and self-discovery. They are bitter-sweet tales of betrayal and addiction mixed with moments of heartbreak and humor that awaken the human spirit. Together, they convey the taste of another time and place, in a Brooklyn that no longer exists, but that the author has fully and lovingly experienced"—Lara Gularte, Poet Laureate of El Dorado County, CA
Literary Nonfiction. Essay.