It's Here!!

Memoirs of the Streets

Russell Vassallo's newest book, Memoirs of the Streets, will be available in late May, 2010.  Like Streetwise: Mafia Memoirs, this book is based upon his recollections of growing up in Newark, New Jersey, during the 1950s and 60s.  In Memoirs he recounts the stories of the "lost" people of his city -- those people that no one would remember but their stories should be told.

In Johnny Blood Russ returns to his old neighborhood.  While there he sees visions from his past including Marie, his first love, who encourages him to face a troubling memory of abuse.

Ethel is a young girl living in an abusive foster home, trying to protect the younger children there and yet daring to dream of love.  (The Outcast Heart)

Jazzo is the young boy with so much potential but he cannot stay on the path that would get him out of the ghetto.

Joe Manz, the product of an abusive home, tried to build a life for himself by joining the Marine Corps but the city calls him back to face a compelling destiny.  (Sweet Face)

Moffit, an elderly man, and Jimmy, a foster child, are two lost souls in the neighborhood yet their stories are unforgettable.

For Eddie is the touching story of an older boy who inspires the younger kids in the neighborhood to achieve their dreams.

Memoirs of the Streets will sell for $19.00 and you can place an advance order for the book by sending a check for $19.00 plus $3.00 for postage to:  Krazy Duck Productions, PO Box 105, Danville, KY 40423.

More information on the book will be posted as it is available.

Review of Memoirs of the Streets

by Russ Heitz

     Unlike most memoirists who focus solely on themselves, on their own lives, their own feelings, their own disappointments, their own triumphs, Russell Vassallo's MEMOIRS OF THE STREETS focuses primarily on other people.  It turns a gentle but penetrating spotlight on a few more of the people he has known during his colorful and eventfilled life.

     Vassallo touched the lives of these people in many ways.  He was with them in their pain.  He shared their loneliness, their grief, their fear.  He erased, at lest temporarily, their isolation, their separateness.  It is an isolation and a separation that Vassallo himself still feels from time to time.  It is the same separateness, the same aloneness that lurks inside each one of us.  Perhaps that is why we are drawn to Vassallo's writings.  He is not only writing about himself and about the people who populated his world.  He is also writing about us, the readers.  He is writing about our lives, and about how LIFE affects us, every day.

     In MEMOIRS OF THE STREETS, Vassallo's compassion and sensitivity are extended to whomever needs it.  It touches the life of Ethel, the battered young girl whose own compassion and desperation is drawn so vividly, so poignantly.  It touches the life of outcasts like Herb Moffit who, like so many others in today's uncaring world, is "friendless, abandoned by society, alone except for their thoughts, hopes, fallen dreams."  It touches the life of Jazzo, a boy with promise, but a boy whose inevitable spiral downward cannot be stopped even by Vassallo's heartfelt concern.  It touches the life of "angel-faced Joe Manz" whose murderous rage finally resulted in a death sentence.  But even on his final day, the day of his execution, Joe Manz wanted Vassallo to be there with him and he was.  As Vassallo says, "It was his destiny to kill.  It was mine to reach out and touch people."

     Throughout this book, Vassallo continues to reach out and touch people, regardless of who they were, what they did, or what their future held.  In most cases he changed their lives, if only for a little while.  But the impact their lives had on Vassallo was probably even stronger and deeper than his impact on them.

     In MEMOIRS OF THE STREETS, Russell Vassallo has once again shown us his heart, his compassion, his humanity, yes, even his love,  And he does it with grace, humility, and sensitivity.

Russ Heitz

www.russheitz.com

Review from Lee Heitz

Good job, Russ - as "Eddie" would say.  Your characterizations were so poignant that they brought tears to my eyes more than once.  Each of the characters you befriended were so real.  I felt as though I was right there.  You brought happiness, a spark of hope in their lives even but for a short time.

Not only is there depth in your writing but you obviously have a very big heart, as well.

Lee