Who Will Weep For Me by Peter Glassman
WHO WILL WEEP FOR ME Being half-Jewish half-Italian in 1950’s high school was unique for Massachusetts Medford High Schooler Michael Waxman. Both Italians and Jews shared clannish ethnic bonding from their strong sense of family and persecution as minorities. Waxman finds identity with his Jewish teenage friends through a Hebrew youth organization called the AZA…
WHO WILL WEEP FOR ME Being half-Jewish half-Italian in 1950’s high school was unique for Massachusetts Medford High Schooler Michael Waxman. Both Italians and Jews shared clannish ethnic bonding from their strong sense of family and persecution as minorities. Waxman finds identity with his Jewish teenage friends through a Hebrew youth organization called the AZA while retaining his Italian upbringing lifestyle in Little Italy in South Medford. Any anti-Semitism by Italian teens is countered by Waxman’s friend and gangster classmate, Carli Santo. Surprisingly, Santo allies with Waxman and four of his Jewish friends while still nurturing his mob-like upbringing. In parallel time, Boston Latin School honor student Edmund Sorelli lives in Italian East Boston with his blonde unwed nurse mother. Sorelli studies hard as an outlet for his sense of isolation and sense of non-family as his mother frequents bars, men and booze on Saturday nights. Rosaly Sorelli doesn’t know who Edmund’s father was and doesn’t care. She doesn’t understand her son’s anger and rage at her lifestyle and his sense of being different from his classmates. Sorelli vows to punish his mother and any girl at Boston Latin who behaves like her. Since high school graduation, the five Medford High students who had bonded closely continue to meet on a monthly basis at the College Deli in Somerville, Massachusetts. Each member has chosen a career path in which three are still within the education process. Michael Waxman is now a third-year medical student at Boston University and shares graduate school stories and angst with his high school friend and third-year dental student, Wendell Golden. Melvin Slinger chose a legal direction and is finishing Harvard Law School. Two of the group are already set in their adult livelihood. Carli Santo, the only non-Jew, had been in the auto-mechanical vocational high school program and apprenticed to a mob-connected chop-shop auto dealer and now has his own non-legal business. The female of the group, Deborah Sterling is a young nurse eight years out of high school still single and without romantic attachments. Edmund Sorelli has left the Army Military Police with a trail of three murders in Europe–each victim a blonde young nurse. He laughs and scoffs at the futile efforts of the Boston Police and the FBI to profile and find him as he continues his quest to prevent women like his mother from duplicating his illegitimate-child status. Life appears stable for all until Michael Waxman stares aghast at the projected slides of the 7th murder victim of the Boston Stocking killer during forensic pathology class. It’s Deborah Sterling. Waxman brings the news to an emergency meeting at the College Deli and from the gloom of grief comes a resolve to seek out and destroy their close friend’s murderer. Mel Slinger uses his Harvard law school connection to obtain information about the Boston Stocking Killer while Carli Santo uses his mob connections to do the same. They set out to identify and trap Deb Sterling’s murderer ahead of the BPD and FBI who seem powerless to do so. Peter Glassman
“The Italian Way”
Five Star Review on Amazon By Retired Critic
I studied at Boston University about the time the Boston Strangler terrorized the city’s streets. I can attest that this fiction story is based on those killings.
An Italian-Jewish kid named Michael Waxman grows up in South Medford, Massachusetts. In high school he manages to balance his background between the Jewish AZA fraternity and the Italian kids and his girl, Deb. Michael’s friend, an Italian kid named Santo, grows up with mob-connected relatives. And a third kid named Sorelli grows up with a promiscuous Italian mother.
The Italian and Jewish lingo in the novel is authentic sounding, the adolescent kids and their various predicaments are believable. High School coming of age sex makes the whole story authentic.
The kid with the promiscuous mother grows up, joins the Army and starts killing. The real Boston Strangler was caught and ended up being murdered in prison. Unlike the real Boston Strangler, Sorelli meets a different fate. His fate will satisfy you, the reader, more—guaranteed!
About the Author
As a baby boomer and retired physician I’m devoting my time to writing medical thrillers. My life as an author of fiction began in 2003 after several individuals consistently commented my speeches delivered at Toastmasters International always like captivating stories regardless of the topic. “I should write a book” they all said. My wife encouraged me because she was sick of listening to me rehearsing my speeches. “What should I write about?” I asked of my supportive spouse. “Write about your patient from the Navy who brought back a bottle full of human eyes from Vietnam.” Thus began my string of medical thrillers starting with THE EYEMAN. The sequel to THE EYEMAN, THE DUTY CREW, chronicles the last Christmas Day of the Vietnam War in a Northeast Naval hospital. Like all my novels true lifetime situations is interwoven with suspenseful and intriguing storylines. I spent most of my life in Massachusetts and schooling leading up to both an MD and PhD in medicine and directed medical research for the last 20 years of my healthcare career with drug development in major pharmaceutical companies. I’ve always been caught up in history and my medical thriller COTTER attests to historical fact both in medicine and family life in the struggling Post-Civil War years 1868-1872. I believe literature should be educational, fun, serious, full of feelings and always with a touch of fantasy. We’re all part dreamers. When Dr. Mathew Collins returns from Afghanistan military service his life encompasses all these elements in THE HELIOS RAIN. A similar experience but on a different motif was blended in my medical thriller surrounding a possible cure for Muscular Dystrophy in THE MYOSIN FACTOR. Ever want to reveal the bad side of an employment experience? My years in the pharmaceutical industry witnessed sabotage and some drugs with unacceptable side effects pressured by upper management to sneak by the FDA. THE ADJUSTMENT CLINIC fictionalizes two of these real-life based situations. WHO WILL WEEP FOR ME is my latest crime thriller about a high school classmate who confronted The Boston Strangler in adulthood. I live in San Antonio, Texas spending 5-hours a day on new writing, working with editors and trying to promote my e-books. Encouraging my 8 grandchildren to read and write is as much fun as my own writing efforts. It’s my hope that the reading public will experience the joys and realities of life through my novels. Peter Glassman MD, PhD