Well.....it depends on what the two things are. Don thought dealing with two problems was easier because the worst one could be put on the back burner for a while.
Don definitely needed to solve and deal with both of these problems, and one was definitely more dangerous than the other. Dealing with the mafia was much more pressing than dealing with a pregnant daughter. To solve both these problems, Don decided to move away and start a new life. The life he and his family began anew and the people he met were quite interesting. You will love Beppe and Israel.
This book held my interest from the beginning. The author is remarkable..the book flows smoothly and very interestingly. I wanted to get back to the book as soon as I could. The characters were described perfectly, and the situations were very real...at times you could feel the fear the characters were experiencing.
For a first book, it was well done. You will enjoy the ending and realize that it is family that matters.
ENJOY!! 5/5
This book was given to me free of charge by the author in return for an honest review.
Hachette
Book Group’s first Book Group Day on Saturday, September 29th was a
huge success. Eleven authors shared stories about their books, their
characters and their writing process in a five-hour event that was a
celebration of reading.
The day kicked off with Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City,
who read the prologue of her upcoming book and joked that that came
easily; now she just needs to finish the rest of the book that lives up
to the prologue. She was very amusing. Asked what she has been reading,
she said that she had just finished reading Aftermath by Rachel
Cusk, and from here she got onto the topic of how English writers are
less sentimental than American ones. When Americans do that, they are
criticized for that. One of her favorite books is The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, a book that Wharton was criticized for because it did just that. Something very interesting to ponder.
The next panel featured three literary fiction authors. First up, Ayad Akhtar spoke about American Dervish,
which he describes as a novel about rupture and renewal. It’s about
Hayat Shah, a young Pakistani American who is in love for the first
time. Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. When Mina
begins dating a man, Hayat is confused by his feelings of betrayal. His
growing passions force him to question all that he has come to believe
is true. I loved the comment that Ayad’s mother shared after she read
it: “We were all doing the very best we could.” I think so many of us
need to think about that when we think about things we might have wanted
to see done differently in our childhoods. Something to remember.
Also on this panel was Jami Attenberg, whose book The Middlesteins comes
out on October 23rd. For more than 30 years, Edie and Richard
Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of
Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems:
Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food, and if she doesn't
stop, she won't have much longer to live. When Richard abandons her, it
is up to the next generation of Middlesteins to take control. Do Edie's
devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault,
too? Jami grew up outside Chicago and, while growing up, shunned
everything Jewish. Writing this book was a chance for her to go back and
look at those roots and talk stories with her family. She has a lot
more openness with her family now than she did before. She made me crave
a great bagel…and a corned beef sandwich.
The Lifeboat has
been one of the most talked-about books of the year. In it, Charlotte
Rogan looks at what happens when an ocean liner sinks and the lifeboat
gets overloaded. In our review, Terry Miller Shannon calls it “a
gripping, urgent story told in a manner that doesn't settle easily and
will be difficult to forget.... [R]eaders will find much to discuss...in
this memorable tale reminiscent of Titanic meets Lord of the Flies."
From what I heard in the room, this was the book that generated the
most excitement of the day. In fact, my friend Beverley who attended the
event with me called yesterday to tell me she already had taken it out
of the library. A revelation to Charlotte: there are two sisters in the
boat…and she has a sister. She had not thought about that as she wrote
it. Her dad had a sailboat, and when they were growing up, he was very
competitive and liked to race with other boats. She and her sister were
too young and too small to do anything. It was their job to stay out of
the way. She was not thinking of that until she saw there were two
sisters in the boat!
On the nonfiction panel, Jodi Kantor talked about her book, The Obamas,
which is about how the First Couple came to the White House with no
background in Washington customs; in fact, they had not lived together
as a family for years. She talks about how the book is a real insider’s
look at how the White House functions and the folks who work there who
have been there for generations, doing the jobs behind the scenes no
matter who is in power. There are valets from the branches of the
military assigned to the President to ensure he always looks dapper and
his closet is arranged with military precision. Amusingly, the First
Lady does NOT have this. Great stories!
Margaret
Roach left her job at Martha Stewart Living to move to her home in
upstate New York, in a remote area. Her latest book, 
The Mystery Panel had Megan Abbott, the author of Dare Me (a book that I could NOT put down), as well as Cornelia Read, whose latest book is Valley of Ashes.
Megan talked about how the ultimate mystery is “What is the switch that
makes people cruel?,” which is definitely a theme in her books about
cheerleaders. Here’s what our reviewer, Joe Hartlaub, had to say about
it: “This is one of the most quietly chilling and compelling books that
you will read this year.... Abbott peels back the seething drama that
lies beneath the glitter and the smiles under the Friday night lights,
and it’s anything but pretty. It sure makes for compulsive reading,
though.”
Cornelia
draws from the experiences of her life; she is a former debutante whose
family background is very socialite while her own parents were dropout
hippies. She amusingly shared that she gave up disguising family members
years ago. And instead they infuse her characters.
Stacy Schiff, author of the hugely popular biography of 
