In 1961, the Di Priscos fled Brooklyn--and the FBI. The father was a
gambler and bookmaker, and agents chased him into the Long Island woods
because he was implicated in police corruption. At thirty-five he
escaped to a strange place called California, where his wife and two of
her four sons joined him. One member of the family graduated high
school, and he would make books of a different sort.
Joe didn't seem called to a life of crime, but evidence is mixed. Once
he was Brother Joseph in a Catholic novitiate, but later he was named
prime suspect in a racketeering investigation. During Vietnam he seized
his college administration building, and then played blackjack around
the world, staked by big-money backers. He managed Italian restaurants
with laughable ineptitude, but also did graduate study and taught for
twenty years. Eventually Joe buries his unstable, manipulative, and
beautiful mother and his brothers, including his heroin-addicted younger
brother. Later, he cares for his father with Alzheimer's. By turns
heartbreaking and hilarious, Subway to California recounts Joe's
battles with personal demons, bargains struck with angels, and truces
with family in this richly colorful tale that reads like great
fiction.
