A Novel of the Fifties
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Cozy but hard-hitting plots and characters. Two non-graphic, historical novels. |
Vincente Bonaventura is a dashing, fancy-dressing tailor/farmer from the dark cypress bayous of northern Louisiana. He seeks his fortune selling Fuller Brush and Electro Lux vacuum cleaners door-to-door around the south while raising his infant daughter Julietta. An old childhood "friend" Bannister Willis stashes 5 kilos of uncut cocaine in the trunk of his Studebaker at a gas station in the backwaters of Tennessee, forcing Vince to mysteriously mail it General Delivery to the Princeton Department of Archaeology where it will be picked up. The gas station owner kidnaps Julietta due to carelessness on Vince's part and without the approval of Bannister who only wanted Vince's help. He did not want to hurt him. Vince is forced to participate as a cocaine mule for fear that something might happen to Julietta.
Julie's basket is left on the front porch of Vince's boarding house in Charlottesville, Virginia after he mails the cocaine to New Jersey.
For the next eight years Vince must dodge the Willis drug cartel, raise his daughter and try and figure out, first: who is doing this to him, and second: how to get out of it. From Caddo Lake, Louisiana, through Charlottesville; Philadelphia; Atlantic City; the Boston area; Monterrey, Mexico and back into the United States to Chicago, Julie helps her father mediate the Willis cartel and a minor contingent of the Boston mob, learning the benefits of smoking pot (which she calls 'silly weed') when depressed or otherwise, cooking like a gourmet ... and cleaning the house.