Straight from East New York, the dark heart of Brooklyn, RUMBLE IN BROOKLYN depicts the street fighting childhood of Joseph Trigoboff, who knew and exchanged blows with several of the murderous gangsters who would later become famous in WISEGUY and GOODFELLAS. In some critical ways RUMBLE serves as a prequel to these other works but it is also a book about the importance of family life to cushion the horrors of a a deadly neighborhood and the enduring power of childhood friendships. PRAISE FOR RUMBLE IN BROOKLYNIt’s damn good and harrowing. I hope Joseph Trigoboff won’t take it amiss when I say he’s a Betty Smith for the twenty-first century. A tree may indeed grow in Brooklyn, but if Rumble in Brooklyn is any indication, it survived the rest of the forest. This is an honest and candid self-portrait set against a city of many contradictions that reads like a good novel. — Loren D. Esteman, author of The True Confessions of Al Capone, an Edgar NomineeRumble in Brooklyn is one of those all-too-rare books that combines history and art with intelligence, heart, and wit. If you want to know the way it really was, “Rumble” will show you. Outstanding. — Warren Murphy, screenwriter, The Eiger Sanction, Lethal Weapon 2Joseph Trigoboff’s Rumble in Brooklyn is as tough as a fist fight and as real as the slow heal of a wound. He puts you there, in the middle of real life experience, and the results are fascinating and gripping as strangle hold. This is one you don’t want to miss. — Joe R. Landsdale, Edgar WinnerRead this book. Joe Trigoboff is an original. — George PelecanosA wonderful depiction of the streets, the gangs, and what it was like to grow up in that environment – always threatening, always challenging. That Joe Trigoboff is sane enough and clean-headed enough to write such a wonderful book says volumes about him! — Peter Duchin, Edgar WinnerJoe Trigoboff is the real deal. The sounds, the smells, the people of post-war Brooklyn live in his memoir. Rumble in Brooklyn is great reading. — Barbara D’Amato, Edgar NomineeJoe Trigoboff fought his way through the enemy and proves in this memoir that we have evolved and improved — if not so much as we’d like. Rumble in Brooklyn takes us back to hard times and brutal bigotry in same old New York. — John Westerman, author of Exit Wounds, The Honor FarmRumble in Brooklyn evokes life in an earlier, if not simpler, time, when kids played in the streets forming shifting alliances and friendships to avoid as well as to perpetrate attacks. Rumble is a record of those times that brings them to life and makes them unforgettable. — J. Madison Davis, Edgar NomineeA brutally honest memoir of coming of age on the mean streets of East New York-Brownsville in the 1940s and 1950s. Joseph Trigoboff, a “four-eyed, fat kid”(his own words), challenged daily to fight by bigger, stronger opponents, learns a secret — “Intend to murder them and act as if.” Family is his salvation: Big Trig, the toughest dad in a tough neighborhood; Rose, the indomitable mother who salved his wounds; the never-to-be-forgotten comrades in the crew that watched his back. New Lots, Livonia, Pitkin, Stillwell Avenues, Linden Boulevard… Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, the Paramount T
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