Street Boys

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Book Overview

Naples, Italy, during four fateful days in the fall of 1943. The only people left in the shattered, bombed-out city are the lost, abandoned children whose only goal is to survive another day. None could imagine that they would become fearless fighters and the unlikeliest heroes of World War II. They are the warriors immortalized in Street Boys, Lorenzo Carcaterra's exhilarating new novel, a book that exceeds even his bestselling Sleepers...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345410998
• ISBN13: 9780345410993
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.3" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Best book ever! people who don't like it are stupid.

this was a very entertaining and emotional book. some readers said it was devoid of emotion, but i totally disagree. carcaterra does not claim this book to be an accurate portrayal of WWII events, but it is based on the brave actions of street fighters. the characters were wonderful and NOT one-sided. the main characters had depth and each had their own unique qualities, fears, and emotion.

Masterful

Lorenzo Carcaterra latest novel "Street Boys" is not just another WWII war story, Carcaterra's narrative is heart-wrenching nonstop action and the best I have read. This author has taken a piece of history and woven a fiction sure to touch the heart of every reader. It is 1943 and Nazi bombs have riddled Naples for months, now their orders are to level the town. Word has reached the German tank troops that the only live residents in the city are children. In an effort to ease their job, German planes drop individually- wrapped, poison-laced candy. From page one of Carcaterra's story, readers will cheer for these homeless hungry heroes as they fight for the only home they have known. What this ragtag troop of children accomplishes will astonish and enthrall and make you forever a committed Carcaterra fan...

THE BEST BOOK EVER

I had to convince my library to but it, but it was worth it. This is one of the best books that I have ever read.

A heartfelt Story

Fiction can imitate fact as in this story. Some complain that this was based on a true happening ergo not fiction. Is not most fiction born that way?. Our minds work off of what happens and questions what if? I found it to be a good story,and well written with the feelings of a combat veteran well defined. I have read all of his books and find this one to be another fine writing.

Helpless no more

Blessed are peacemakers, for they say things like, "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"Gandhi was right, of course, but what if the orphans and the homeless fought back?That's the premise of Lorenzo Carcaterra's new novel, "Street Boys," in which a ragged brigade of children rises up against a cold-blooded enemy in World War II."Street Boys" is a departure from Carcaterra's engaging but darker stories about crime and punishment on New York's meanest streets. But like the best-selling "Sleepers," "Apaches," "A Safe Place" and "Gangster," it's bound by the threads of survival and rootless youth.This isn't Hell's Kitchen or the Bronx, though. It's no man's land: bombed-out Naples in 1943. Among the last people in the evacuated city are lost, abandoned children whose only goal is to survive another day.Survival transforms them into fierce commandos, facing a Nazi tank division sent to demolish the ancient Italian city before Allied armies arrive. The sadistic orders from Hitler himself: If the city can't belong to the FŸhrer, it will belong to no one.When Cpl. Steve Connors, a 25-year-old American soldier assigned to scout the city ahead of Gen. George Patton's advance, gets cut off from his own unit, he finds new comrades among Naples' young resistance fighters.Armed with salvaged guns, unexploded German bombs and their own ingenuity, Connors and his army of children are determined to deflect the Nazis and save the city -- or die.But Carcaterra has seldom made conflict easy. His good guys are often a little bad, and his bad guys are sometimes gifted with endearing, even redeeming, qualities. In our real world, such complexities are a fact of life; in commercial fiction, it's rare.Carcaterra's ambitious cast of characters is deftly drawn. Vincenzo Soldari, a 16-year-old history buff determined to follow in his ancestors' footsteps, is the real leader of the children's army. He's helped by Carlo Maldini, a middle-aged drunkard desperate to redeem himself, and his daughter Nunzia, a ferocious guerrilla who falls in love with the American GI who comes to their aid.Carcaterra is working on the screenplay of "Street Boys," to be directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson. The book lends itself to good cinema: intricate characters, underdogs facing insurmountable odds, a desperate mission and lots of explosions -- the stuff of our best American war movies, from "For Whom the Bell Tolls" to "Saving Private Ryan."No less complex than World War II novels by Norman Mailer and James Jones, "Street Boys" explores a different perspective on the war, and rides a fast-paced plot toward a heroic ending. The end of the war and the Allied invasion of Italy are well-known, but it is the transformation of characters along the way that defines the quality of historical fiction.In "Street Boys," Carcaterra paints a vivid port