For the Sins of My Father

Zusatztext Offers a remarkable perspective on how a brutal mobster could lead a sweet home life as a suburban dad.” — New York Times “One of the most searing volumes ever written about the mob . . . An] unforgettable memoir.” — Publishers Weekly “Admirers of Mafia fiction . . . should enjoy DeMeo’s attempt to strip off the gaudy veneer of what is! what was! and [what] always will be very dirty business.” — Detroit Free Press Informationen zum Autor Albert Demeo Klappentext A suspenseful, emotionally charged real-life Sopranos: The son of New York's most notorious Mafia killer reveals the conflicted life he led being raised by a cold-blooded murderer, who was also a devoted family man, and the wrenching legacy of Mafia family life. Al DeMeo will never forget the day in 1992 when a coworker, a fellow trader at the New York Stock Exchange, taunted him with a copy of the hot new book Murder Machine, chronicling the horrific criminal life of DeMeo's father, Roy, the head of the most deadly gang in organized crime. The moment sent DeMeo into a psychological tailspin: How could he have spent his life looking up to, and loving, a vicious killer? For the Sins of My Father recounts the chilling rise and fall of the man who led the Gambino family's most fearsome killers and thieves, through the eyes of a son who had never known any other kind of life. Coming of age in an opulent Long Island house where money is abundant but its source is unclear, Al becomes Roy's confidant, sent to call in loans at age fourteen and gradually coming to understand his father's job description--loan shark, car thief, porn purveyor and, above all, murderer. But when Al is seventeen, Roy's body is found in the trunk of a car, a gangland slaying that places Al between federal prosecutors seeking his testimony and a mob crew determined to keep him quiet. Desperate to abide by the father-son bond, but equally determined to escape his father's dangerous and doomed life, Al Demeo embarks on a courageous quest for the truth, reconciliation, and honor. With the implacable narrative drive of a thriller and the power of a painfully honest memoir, For the Sins of My Father presents a startling and unprecedented perspective on the underworld of organized crime, exposing for the first time the cruel legacy of a Mafia life.one FAMILY Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit. --t. s. eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock My earliest memory is of blindness. I was four years old when I woke up in a hospital crib with patches over my eyes, darkness all around, utterly alone. Confused and disoriented, for a moment I could not understand where I was or why my parents had left me there alone. Then I remembered: I'd had an operation to fix my crossed eye. Fear and loneliness whispered in the invisible room where I lay, and I cried out for my mother and father. When the bandages came off a few days later, the first image to emerge from the blur was my father's worried face. Looking back, it seems fitting. I have spent more than thirty years since then struggling to bring him into focus. I was born in a quiet residential Brooklyn neighborhood in 1966, the second child of parents barely out of their teens. I had an older sister named Debra and a teenage stepbrother in my Uncle Joe. My grandfather DeMeo had died when Joe was a baby, and when Grandma DeMeo returned t...

Product details

• Authors: Albert DeMeo, Mary Jane Ross
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.09.2003
• EAN: 9780767906890
• ISBN: 978-0-7679-0689-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 205 mm x 15 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous