Gangster Sonny is the big man in Calogero's Bronx neighborhood. A shooting witnessed by Calogero is the starting point of a lasting bond between the gangster and the small boy. Father (bus driver Lorenzo), however, disap- proves. Calogero grows up under the wings of both men, torn between his own natural honesty and his fascination with Sonny. C's neighborhood cronies get involved in theft, use of guns, racial fights. When C meets girl, things don't...

Contains three novels that follow the lives of a young Irish governess, a blind musician and conductor, a Scottish physician, and an immigrant family as they deal with issues of life and love in nineteenth-century New York.