Return to Shepherd Avenue

Acclaimed author Charlie Carillo revisits Shepherd Avenue, the novel that sparked his career, in a witty, moving story about growing older and (sometimes) growing up . . . For the second time in a few weeks, Joey Ambrosio has done something reckless. The first incident—climbing to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge to scatter his father's remains—earned him newspaper headlines and court-ordered therapy. This time, he's doing something arguably even more dangerous: buying his grandparents' old house in the rough Brooklyn neighborhood where he spent an idyllic summer half a century ago. With boarded up stores and bars on every window, Shepherd Avenue sure isn't the way it used to be. Then again, neither is Joey. In 1961, he was a newly motherless kid trying to find his way. Now a successful children's book author estranged from his grown daughter, he's viewed with suspicion by his new neighbors—and with amusement by the...