Railway Avenue

Railway Avenue will make you laugh, cry, and in the end, the characters will remain with you long after you have finished reading. It is a love story that spans the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. In it, Tommy DiNardo is willing to kill to avenge the murder of the woman he has loved since he was five years old. Tommy grows up in the working class Italian-American neighborhood of Corona, New York. Growing up in the fifties, Tommy and his friends do things kids of that era did: build clubhouses, catch fire flies, ride bicycles, and spy into a mysterious church of holy rollers.
As teens, they hang out on stoop tops, listen to rock and roll, go to drag races, attend high school proms and have early sexual experiences. But there is a dark side to this pleasantly sounding story. These kids endure domestic violence, an abusive nun, a polio epidemic, a fire that threatens to destroy their homes, the violent death of a young friend, the racial turmoil that erupts in 1960s Corona, the Vietnam War and murder.