Most Precious Blood

By (author): Vince Sgambati

Fans of Anne Tyler’s quirky characters and her attention to family life, or Pete Hamill’s depiction of diverse, ethnic, urban neighborhoods will connect to Most Precious Blood, set in the eleventh-hour of a declining Italian-American neighborhood where complex and often destructive loyalties have dire consequences. Hard Luck Lenny is the quintessential good son, brother, and father, and he fears a calamity will derail his son’s future the way his own dreams were derailed years ago, but Frankie is preoccupied with thoughts of Gennaro DiCico, the son of a small-time mobster. Lenny’s fears are realized when a cabdriver’s son avenges his father’s murder.

AUTHOR

Vince Sgambati

Vince Sgambati’s family owned and operated an Italian-American grocery store similar to Lasante’s. Though a work of fiction, the soul of Most Precious Blood is drawn from Vince’s experiences, and like most of Lenny Lasante’s childhood friends and siblings, Vince moved on, but often returned to reclaim some lost flavor of ethnicity. His short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals and anthologies and have been recognized by the Nimrod Literary Awards: the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest (2013 & 2016). Most Precious Blood is his first novel. Vince makes his home in the Finger Lakes area of Central New York and in Manhattan.


Reviews

This book’s characters, and their neighborhood, will stay with readers long after they finish it.


Sgambati paints a vivid portrait of Italian-American life in present day Queens where the past weighs heavier than the present. At once tragic and redemptive, Most Precious Blood is essentially a story of the messy way love, community and family play out and the price we pay for connection.


Most Precious Blood approaches the concept of “being known” from different angles: physical appearance, surname, a family’s country of origin, home residence, occupation, gender, age, skin colour, ethnicity. The author reminds readers that most of these identifiers are manmade, arbitrary, and mutable.


To read Most Precious Blood is to become closely acquainted not only with Lenny and Frankie’s neighborhood, but with their ancestry, their love, and their food


Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×

Fans of Anne Tyler’s quirky characters and her attention to family life, or Pete Hamill’s depiction of diverse, ethnic, urban neighborhoods will connect to Most Precious Blood, set in the eleventh-hour of a declining Italian-American neighborhood where complex and often destructive loyalties have dire consequences. Hard Luck Lenny is the quintessential good son, brother, and father, and he fears a calamity will derail his son’s future the way his own dreams were derailed years ago, but Frankie is preoccupied with thoughts of Gennaro DiCico, the son of a small-time mobster. Lenny’s fears are realized when a cabdriver’s son avenges his father’s murder.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

278 Pages
9in * 6in * 0.2in
420gr

Published:

March 01, 2018

City of Publication:

Hamilton

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

Guernica Editions

ISBN:

9781771833066

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Literary

Featured In:

Pride Reads

Language:

eng

Other Titles by Vince Sgambati

No other books found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.