What Once Was Promised

Organized crime, police corruption, and ethnic tensions put increasing pressure on an Italian American family in this thrilling multigenerational saga. In 1914, 16-year-old Domenic Bassini leaves Italy for America. On board the ship, he protects young stowaway Ermino Lentini and has an intense affair with Francesca Bernardelli under the nose of her industrialist husband, Cologero. Settling into Boston’s North End, Domenic lands a coveted construction job, and for the most part manages to stay out of trouble, though he invites ire from the Irish American police after backing Ermino in a fight with the son of a cop. As the years go by, Ermino grows into an ambitious mobster while Domenic marries and has a son, Dommy, whose football career at Harvard is interrupted by WWII. Dommy returns to Boston as a war hero, becomes a cop, and refuses to go along with the department’s widespread corruption and graft. When Dommy’s moral rectitude has grave consequences, Domenic faces an impossible decision, one that reunites him with Cologero, Ermino, and Francesca in an explosive climax. Trubiano’s rendering of the period tends to feel like a Wikipedia entry, with dutiful if superfluous nods to anarchist Bartolemo Vanzetti and the Boston Molasses Flood, but the novel finds its rhythm once Dommy enters the police force. This loving portrait of a bygone Boston is worth a look. (Self-published)