Saint of the Narrows Street

Boyle (Shoot the Moonlight Out) delivers his most ambitious novel yet with this extraordinary crime saga set in the working-class neighborhood of Gravesend, Brooklyn. The story opens in 1986, with 28-year-old Risa realizing she’s made a tragic mistake by marrying Saverio “Sav” Franzone. Sav’s escalating violence comes to a head the night he drunkenly pulls a gun on Risa and the couple’s eight-month old son. When Sav threatens Risa’s sister later that night, Risa reflexively grabs a metal pan and hits him with it, killing him. The sisters panic and turn for help to their neighbor, Christopher “Chooch” Gardini, a childhood friend of Sav’s who harbors secret feelings for Risa. Chooch comes up with a plan to bury the body on his family’s land upstate, and over the next two decades, it appears the cover-up has worked: most neighbors are satisfied with the story that Sav ran off and abandoned his family, but doubts persist, especially among the regulars of the local dive bar. As Risa and Sav’s son grows up and begins to follow in his father’s criminal footsteps, he becomes increasingly obsessed with learning more about the night Sav died. Boyle structures the sprawling tale like a Greek tragedy, mining potent themes of legacy and class with such force and empathy that readers may come to think of him as the Balzac of Brooklyn. It’s a stunning achievement. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Feb.)