by Peter A. Ciullo

Not so long ago, there was a young man, kid really, of Italian-American background who had little use for school, except that he loved to write. His passion was prose, but his lot seemed to lie elsewhere. As heir apparent to Fusco's salvage yard, his future was stripping exhausted autos of their last bit of dignity before crushing them for recycling.

The force—la forza del destino—was strong in this one, however, so John quit school at 16 and hit the road. For six years he followed his thumb through the South, sustaining his body as a manual laborer and his soul as a blues musician and lyricist. But his destino would not be denied. A GED and a well crafted short story were his keys to the dramatic writing program at NYU. There he won a prestigious screenwriting award for his first screenplay and then an unprecedented repeat for his second, "Crossroads," which became a 1986 Columbia film.

As a hot young screenwriter, John packed off to Los Angeles, but stayed only long enough to discover it was not where he wanted to be. He moved to Vermont and wrote movies: "Young Guns," "Young Guns II," "Thunderheart," "The Babe," "Loch Ness." The key to his seemingly charmed life as a screenwriter was best expressed in a 1993 interview: "I write from the heart... I believe the screenwriter is a real writer... I was going to go off and write novels or plays or screenplays and I chose the screenplay format because it suited my writing style... It's my milieu as a writer so I write about the things that I really care about."

Judging by "Paradise Salvage," his first effort as a novelist, John Fusco really cares about the heritage that he fled at 16. "Paradise Salvage" is set in Saukiwog Mills, a thinly disguised Waterbury, CT, soon after it proclaims itself the Renaissance City in 1979. A mill town with the mills in ruin, its echoes of manufacturing glory, its ethnic enclaves and its characteristic political peccadilloes provide the context for the story. Supporting roles are played, several under alias, by Holy Land, the newspaper building clock tower, Watertown Drive-In, the Soldier's Horse, Cavallo's, Ortone's, Hammonassett and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

The story is told through the eyes of Nunzio (Annunziato) Paradiso, whose 12th summer, the last stand of carefree childhood, is sacrificed to family responsibility. His father, Big Dan (Donato) Paradiso, has decided that Nunzio should spend the summer working at the family's auto salvage yard with his rebellious 19-year-old brother, Danny Boy (Donato, Jr.).

Early in June they get the call to Holy Hill to pick up an abandoned '73 Bonneville. In the process of performing the junkyard last rights, scavenging the car for abandoned treasures, Nunzio finds a cigarette wrapper, a token and a curiously inscribed hat pin that become clues to a horrific discovery, a death-rattling murder victim in the trunk. Even as he tries to alert his father, The Crusher turns the car into a compacted coffin.

Nunzio's credibility is suspect, with his father's knee-jerk suspicion that the boy is high, softening to the conclusion that what he really saw were dead puppies. Nunzio, as Big Dan quotes his wife, "...he's got a wonderful imagination, he's a dreamer, going to be a writer." Nunzio finally convinces Danny Boy, however, and he has his entree to the seamier side of his hometown.

Danny, once a football golden boy and consequent source of pride for Big Dan, is nearly fixated on the movie "Taxi Driver" as he aspires to be an actor like his idol, Robert De Niro. At night he trolls the bars where willing divorcees simmer, and introduces Nunzio to these adult playgrounds while searching for the murdered man's identity. The resulting swirl of Nunzio's innocence and staccato maturation is simply and humorously represented by his reaction in a strip joint to two of the first female breasts he ever sees, which belong to his former fourth-grade teacher.

Nunzio and Danny enlist the assistance of the family's disinherited black sheep, and Nunzio's goomba (actually one of three), Angelo Volpe, former dirty cop whose punishment was a failed suicide and life as a quadriplegic. The author's expertise in character development is evident throughout the book, but nowhere more so than in Angelo. Confined to a wheelchair, Angelo uses an Easter Seals trained monkey for his hands, and a tough black lady cab driver as his feet, nursemaid and conscience. A more cynical, vulgar, debased and ultimately pitiable person would be hard to conceive. The boy's plea for assistance, nevertheless, awakens a long-dormant sense of purpose and familia that almost rescues him from his nonlife.

As Fusco constructs the scene for his murder mystery, he uses Nunzio's extended family to paint an uncannily accurate and perceptive picture of the evolution of first to third generation Italian American. Some guy in Peoria is going to read about the sacrament of Sunday's tomato sauce, about the seaside tutte de mare picnic, about La Strega (the witch) and mal'occhio (evil eye), and think that Fusco is peddling stereotypes. But the descriptions are lovingly wrought and absolutely dead-on. I can still smell the meatballs and bracciola that my mother fried on Saturday for the next day's sauce, and Nunzio's Nonni was in good company—my grandmother could cure mal'occhio over the phone, too.

"Paradise Salvage," is promoted as "a taut thriller and a lyrical coming-of-age story." I found the "thriller" part, unraveling the murder mystery, something less than taut, although its resolution in the last third of the book is cleverly drawn with enough action and intrigue to satisfy. It holds particular appeal, and some unhappy memories, for anyone who was living in the Waterbury area when the city's nascent Renaissance took a Machiavellian turn. That the dramatic tension is nearly dissipated in the middle third of the book is ultimately forgivable, however, because the pacing is sacrificed to an insightful immersion into Nunzio's Americanized Italian family and culture.

As Fusco explains, to Italians, storia is the family's history. But history serves only as the foundation for a story molded over time by triumphs, foibles, superstitions, heartaches and pride into a distinct familial self-image. The plot and atmosphere of "Paradise Salvage" is supported by the Paradiso family storia, but it is seasoned with the storia of the author's family and ultimately the storia of the city of Waterbury.

"Paradise Salvage" is aimed right at your heart, but expect collateral impact in your gut and head.

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Peter A. Ciullo, a chemist, lives in Naugatuck, Conn.

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