by David Prete

Life can be tough, messy and unfair, and JT, Prete’s main character, suffers the butt end of all three. Brought up within a regular, seemingly pleasant, middle-class family in Yonkers, JT’s life has somehow managed to become spectacularly unstuck when we first meet him. Through a series of flashbacks, his story unfolds and we begin to understand how he got to where he is: living in an East Village tenement, moving rocks for a living, getting into fights, awaiting a court case, failing to ease his mind enough to find sleep.

As JT’s hideous family secrets are revealed, Prete makes clever use of imagery to contrast JT’s pleasant, river-bank childhood with the barren rock-landscape of his current under-fed, self-hating, shaven-headed life. This a story that builds toward a dramatic climax, as the ramifications of the past are revealed. As the tension built, so did my emotions: anger, pity, sorrow and love. The sins of the fathers shall indeed, and most lamentably, be visited upon the sons.

©Julia Welstead 2012