Shortly after author Sally Frances moved into Carroll Gardens in the early 1990s, a neighbor told her about overhearing a fight between an adult brother and sister in the backyard of their shared brownstone next-door.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sister says, \u2018You can\u2019t hit me\u2014I\u2019m not your wife!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Complex family dynamics lie at the heart of Frances\u2019s debut novel, Carroll Gardens Story. Set in 1998, the novel centers on three men in the tightly knit Italian American community.<\/p>\n
Helper is a 50-year-old former child prodigy living with the effects of a childhood brain injury. He also experiences synesthesia\u2014his feelings sometimes register as musical notes. After his involvement in the accidental death of an unpopular Irish neighbor, Helper hides out in the childhood home he shares with his closeted older brother Gino, a tough-talking construction worker. When their nephew Tony, a newly promoted detective, is assigned to the case, the investigation threatens to reveal both brothers\u2019 secrets.<\/p>\n
More than a whodunit, Carroll Gardens Story is a portrait of people shaped\u2014and often trapped\u2014by family expectations, old loyalties, secrecy, and the unwritten codes of a Brooklyn neighborhood whose influence can still be felt today.<\/p>\n
In a recent conversation over Zoom, Frances told me she has \u201ca real sense of humor\u201d about Carroll Gardens. She appreciates \u201cits folklore and its history: Al Capone got married in this neighborhood, all these bakeries have been here forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels very cozy, and I wanted to celebrate it,\u201d she said. \u201cSomething about the working-class-ness of it drew me in.\u201d
Frances, a retired clinical social worker, dedicates the book to her patients \u201cwho trusted me with their traumas, and collaborated with me to begin their healing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part, working-class people that I know still don\u2019t understand psychotherapy and how it\u2019s supposed to help them,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re stuck with that worried feeling that if you go to a therapist, then you\u2019ve got to be crazy. The problem with trauma is that people don\u2019t reveal secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the novel, all three men have been traumatized as children. \u201cThey get stuck and frozen in their development,\u201d Frances said. \u201cHow do you regenerate adult development if you\u2019ve had this kind of history? The first step is to form some kind of relationship that you can learn to trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each of the men gradually forms relationships capable of moving him forward: Gino with Lee, his lover in Long Island City; Tony with his veteran detective partner, Muldow; and Helper with Tony\u2019s social worker wife, Amy.<\/p>\n
Frances spoke about a concept from trauma therapy known as an \u201calternate validator\u201d\u2014people outside one\u2019s family who provide a different kind of recognition. \u201cLet\u2019s say your family of origin is not in good shape, and you\u2019re a kid and you\u2019re miserable, but there\u2019s this lady down the street who has a cat, and she offered you cookies once. Or there\u2019s a guy who sells papers, and you go and talk to him. Those are alternate validators in your life who will give you feedback that\u2019s not the same as your family of origin\u2014and you can start to build some health based on those relationships. They\u2019re still extremely important for development. I wanted to demonstrate that. I wanted to show people what that was like.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are two currents running through the novel: the conversation happening on the surface, and the turmoil happening underneath. Characters say one thing even as they think and feel another. It\u2019s this complexity that makes for such a rich reading experience.<\/p>\n
Frances\u2019s original title for the novel was Helper\u2019s Neighborhood. Yet she told me that readers often disagree about who the book\u2019s main character actually is\u2014some say Tony, others Helper or Gino. \u201cThat\u2019s been remarkable for me as an author,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The novel is set in the time right before I moved to the neighborhood myself. I lived on Henry Street, above one of the neighborhood\u2019s old social clubs and as a gay person, often felt like an outsider, especially when I first arrived. The neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying. Old-timers felt like people were coming in, driving up prices, and then leaving\u2014and leaving them priced out of their longtime neighborhood. Living there for fifteen years helped build trust that allowed me, too, to consider the neighborhood home. I remember one of the guys downstairs asking me, \u201cWhere are we supposed to go? This is where we\u2019re from. Those new people can go back to Ohio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reading Carroll Gardens Story, I found myself thinking about different faces from the old neighborhood: the deli guy at Met Food; the girls behind the counter at Mazzola\u2019s; Jamie, the bartender at B61 with a Radical Faerie brother; the baker Margaret Palca, forever with a colored bandanna on her head, wiping her hands on her apron. Looking back, I can see the way the neighborhood slowly drew its arms around me and held me close. Carroll Gardens Story brought me back.<\/p>\n