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Grand Avenue
Thomas DiVerde
Jack Roma’s Sicilian, lower-middle-class,
street-wise persona stands in stark contrast to Nancy Hopkins,
a blonde, wealthy, and classically educated socialite. He toils
as a union stonemason. She is a senior in Northwestern University’s
fabled drama department. While Jack was born, raised, and still
lives on Grand Avenue in Chicago’s gritty West Side Little
Italy, Nancy has spent her entire privileged existence in the
rarefied atmosphere of the wealthy enclave of Lake Forest. The
opulence and perfection in which she seemingly exists is, however,
a façade as Nancy finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship
with Brett, the scion of another Lake Forest millionaire. Jack
and Nancy’s love affair must withstand the Lake Forest community’s
contemptuous treatment of Jack, as well as the police investigation
into Brett’s disappearance that focuses on Jack and Nancy.
Equally straining on the lovers is Nancy’s difficulty accepting
Jack’s organized crime connections and comprehending the
Grand Avenue “code.”
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The Neighborhood
Thomas DiVerde
Jack Roma is at a crossroads in his life.
Will he follow in the footsteps of his idolized uncles, both
players in the organized crime family known in Chicago as “the
Outfit?” Or will he emulate the hardscrabble, boring,
yet honest life of his father, a mail truck driver? Jack’s
dilemma, even as the Outfit targets his uncles for execution,
is worsened as he begins a relationship with the daughter of
the Outfit boss who has ordered the uncles’ execution.
When not wrestling with his dilemma, Jack is a high school senior
who, with his friends, flex their maturing gangster muscles
in a variety of ways: at the all-boys Catholic high school,
where the tension between the Italians and their sworn enemies,
the blacks and the demented Irish priests, serves as a lit match
to tinder; at dances and parties, where the city boys mimic
their older brethren by taking what, and whom, they want.
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