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"Angels
on Grant Street"
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About the Author... Angelo Bracciale
I consider life for me began at about thirty. By that time Military Service, college, apprenticeships and puberty had all been gotten out of the way. I have had, as so many of my contemporaries had, a long lasting love affair with the automobile. Most of my adult life was spent in the auto industry, at times in national positions; which gave my mother the opportunity to describe me as a "big shot."
There were other endeavors along the way; including cemetery plot sales, telemarketing for Kirby vacuum cleaner, soliciting donations for a P.A.C., and warehouse worker; just to give a short representative list.
A career path that stretched from New York to San Francisco; England to Marietta, Georgia; and Youngstown, Ohio to outside of Detroit, Michigan enriched this adventure we call life.
In my later years I came to realize just how much living my childhood years in a two-room apartment and having a cemetery as a back yard was not poverty. It was fun. Living in a neighborhood rich with such a diverse mixture of nationalities, colors, creeds and religious backgrounds was a rare gift, generally reserved only for Americans.
Early in my life a much wiser and older man told me: "It's a good life, but don't let anyone ever tell you that it's going to be easy." He just never explained how not easy it was going to be, nor how very, very amazingly good.
Part of this goodness is a wife of over twenty years and daughters that I adore; and a chance to tell stories. What a blessed life I have led.
A description of Angels on Grant Street
Angels on Grant Street is a children's story for adults as well as an adult story for children. A nostalgic tale is set in a diversely ethnic village. It centers on a father telling a "Once upon a time" story to his injured daughter in her hospital room.
That sentimental journey is fueled by the courage of an unlikely duo of middle-aged Aunt Mary and her barely teenage nephew, Angelo.
The story revolves around unequivocal determination against insurmountable odds. This creates an opportunity for ordinary people from a small New York town in 1955 to accomplish the extraordinary. A quest to find the answer to the well-being of Mary's son sets off the adventure.
During a blinding blizzard which has cut off all electricity and communications, the twosome set out across the village to find the answer to a question that must be answered on that more than memorable Christmas Eve. Learning substances of living at every rest along the way.
She finds that her son Mokie is seriously hurt, but very alive.
Aunt Mary makes a declaration on January 6th, Little Christmas, the Epiphany. She, and as it turns out the entire town, vows to keep their family Christmas tree alive until the soldiers return from Germany. This stretches to April of the following year.
A genuine warm and happy ending gives license for the reader to silently enjoy a: "hooray!". Or as the Italian family cheers: Cento Anni!
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