Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Anaïs Flogny (2024) 240 pages 

Cinematic and expansive. Parallels some of the Godfather trilogy organized crime milieu, but with a gay man at the center. Closeted gay men, who are both immigrants in America, find the underworld of importing and selling alcohol and, later, other drugs to be their way to success and power. Jules, the younger protege, and Adam are scrappy. The story moves from 1930s Chicago to 1940s New York. Eufrasio is a more violent and ambitious partner from the Mafia family in New York who comes between Jules and Adam. Jules begins to hate himself as he confronts betrayal and guilt.

The View from Lake Como

The View from Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani, 416 pages

Jess is recently divorced and has moved into the basement of her overbearing Italian-American parents' house, lamenting her inability to do anything in life that really inspires passion. She's a talented draftsperson for her uncle's marble business and just after he invites her on a trip to visit the source of the company's marble in Italy, he dies, leaving her with an open-ended plane ticket, a new business in her name, and a whole pile of trouble in the form of long-buried family secrets and a second set of account books for the business. While she agrees to work with the feds on sorting out her uncle's crimes, Jess is allowed to leave for Italy, where she does whatever she can to figure out who she really is.

This was my first Trigiani novel, and I wasn't really expecting the high level of New Jersey/Italian American stereotypes — it was a bit overbearing in the first section of the book. However, once Jess made it to Italy, the idyllic village and slower pace of life was particularly soothing. It wasn't my favorite book, and it definitely leaned a little too hard on romantic comedy/woman on a journey of self-discovery tropes, but I'm glad I read it. It's a good escape.

Tony's wife

Tony's Wife / Adriana Trigiani, read by Edoardo Ballerini, 473 pgs. 

Chi Chi Donatelli and Saverio Armandonada meet in the 1930's but don't end up together until the war.  They have been friends and co-workers.  They are singers/musicians/performers who do a bit together in a traveling show.  When they fall for each other, it is he who convinces her.  She knows his past and his previous loves...or maybe just affairs.  Things start out strong but Saverio (now know by the simpler Tony) stays on the road while Chi Chi stays home with the kids.  His various affairs and emotional absence breaks them apart.  They still have a professional relationship and Chi Chi cleans up after his next 3 marriages.  This is their life story, she still loves him but has become a successful independent woman on her own.  I enjoyed Ballerini's narration, he does a good job giving voice to the variety of characters.

The Black Hand: the Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History

The Black Hand / Stephan Talty, 298 pp.

Joseph Petrosino is an American hero that most of us have never heard of.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a form of organized crime developed in Italian-American communities which was new for its time.  Members of the mysterious Black Hand would kidnap people, in particular entirely innocent children, and demand cooperation with their protection racket in exchange for the prisoner's life.  Talty draws a skilful portrait of the helpless terror families faced, and of the idealistic, almost supernaturally courageous Petrosino, the first Italian-American detective of the New York police force.

A great all-around slice of history, Talty is especially strong when looking at the effects of prejudice on policing; in this case, the largely Irish NYPD saw the Black Hand's predations as just Italians doing their violent Italian thing.  The result was that the Black Hand grew unchecked for years before Petrosino stubbornly climbed the ranks and pushed for more vigorous policing of his community.  Eerily and depressingly similar to Jill Leovy's analysis of under-policing of African-American communities in Ghettoside.