Paradise Salvage, John Fusco

In his tantalizing debut novel, John Fusco marvelously traces the unforgettable trajectory of twelve-year-old Nunzio Paradiso's last summer of innocence. To Kill a Mockingbird depicted such a summer-the last unfettered, wondrous season of youth. Each new wreck towed into Paradise Salvage-where the ferocious crusher presides with its power to reduce luxury automobiles into heaps of twisted metal-is a desultory gift from Fortune. Sometimes it's a handful of loose change or an old copy of Vue magazine with a Betty Page centerfold under the front seat, but on a hot summer day in 1979, in the trunk of an abandoned Pontiac, Nunzio uncovers a secret that will change his life. In the blink of an eye, all evidence is lost to the crusher, and only his older brother Danny Boy believes Nunzio's story. Enlisting the help of his father's renegade cousin, an ex-cop with a dark history of his own, he embarks on a bizarre and dangerous journey. A story of innocence lost and justice found, of ambition frustrated and dreams realized, and the difference between generations of a family struggling to reconcile the traditions of the past with the demands of the present, Paradise Salvage glows with heart and marks the debut of a gifted storyteller.