White Guys - Softcover

Back in hardscrabble Winship, Massachusetts, in the early 1970's, Billy Mogavero was everything his friends wanted to be - tough, sexy, graceful, a leader of young men. Twenty years later, the four teenagers who followed him around have all made it out of Winship. Have made it, period. Only Billy's stayed behind. Now he's a paint salesman, living at home with his mentally handicapped brother. When the guys go back to visit the old neighbourhood, their reunion gives Billy's life a second act in yuppie Boston, where his charm catapults him into the respectability that they've been working for all their lives. No-one is more enthralled by Billy's success than his old best friend, Timmy O'Kane. As he watches Billy move up in the mall development business and marry a woman who's every bit his match for nerve and daring, Timmy feels the limitations of his own safe life: his quiet career selling textbooks, his sensible marriage into a well-to-do family and a cozy suburb. But after Billy and his pregnant wife are victims of a drive-by shooting, which only Billy survives, Timmy is ensnared in a series of events that threatens to bring his life tumbling down around him - a risk that is both terrifying and terrifyingly seductive...

Anthony Giardina is the author of two novels, Men with Debts and A Boy's Pretensions, a collection of short stories, The Country of Marriage, and a number of plays that have been produced to critical acclaim in New York, Seattle, Yale and Washington. His stories and essays have appeared in Harpers, Esquire, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. He lives with his wife and children in Northampton, Massachusetts.