Michael’s Place

When, in 1978, an innocent, somewhat naive adolescent from the predominantly white and Jewish neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, befriends an Italian, meth-mainlining, fatherless, petty criminal from South Philadelphia in the seething, gang-riddled Black and Hispanic cauldron that was Strawberry Mansion in 1978, a type of social science experiment ensues. Will the structured, family-centered appeal of the Jewish boy’s grandparents’ home and values provide the street urchin the stability he craves? Or will the allure of illicit adventure and the taste of forbidden love taint the adolescent’s wholesomeness? This is the story that unravels in a novel where the bond of friendship is strained to the breaking point by the combination of thievery, illegal narcotics, sex, deceit and a gruesome homicide. Decades later, when this unlikely friendship has a chance to rekindle, when the boys have grown into young men, morphed and matured in what appears to be fundamental ways, what form will their reinvented relationship take? How will the bond reforge? And can the balm of the present heal the wounds of the past? These are the questions that are confronted and finally reconciled in the coming-of-age novel, Michale’s Place.