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The Family by Naomi Krupitsky

Historical fiction

The Family

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Naomi Krupitsky, on your first book!

by Naomi Krupitsky

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Quick take

Set in mid-century Brooklyn, a story of a decades-long friendship between two women bound by the sins of their fathers.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Female_Friendship

    Female friendships

  • Illustrated icon, Literary

    Literary

  • Illustrated icon, NYC

    NYC

Synopsis

Two daughters. Two families. One inescapable fate.

Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, a loud, untamed thing. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends from birth, their homes share a brick wall and their fathers are part of an unspoken community that connects them all: the Family. Sunday dinners gather the Family each week to feast, discuss business, and renew the intoxicating bond borne of blood and love.

Until Antonia’s father dares to dream of a different life and goes missing soon after. His disappearance drives a whisper-thin wedge between Sofia and Antonia as they become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison made up of expectations, even as they remain bound to one another, their hearts expanding in tandem with Red Hook and Brooklyn around them. One fateful night their loyalty to each other and the Family will be tested. Only one of them can pull the trigger before it’s too late.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Family.

The Family

PROLOGUE

July 1948

Shooting a gun is like jumping into cold water.

You stand there, poised on the edge, muscles coiled to leap, and at every moment until the last, there is the possibility of not doing it. You are filled with power: not as you jump, but just before. And the longer you stand there, the more power you have, so that by the time you jump the whole world is waiting.

But the moment you leap, you are lost: at the mercy of the wind and gravity and the decision you made moments before. You can do nothing but watch helplessly as the water looms closer and closer and then there you are, submerged and soaking, ice gripping your torso with its hands, breath caught at the back of your throat.

So a gun unfired holds its power. In the moments before trigger clicks and bullet is unleashed, beyond your grasp, out of your control. As thunder crashes in the distant wet clouds and the electric air raises the small hairs on your arms. As you stand, feet planted like your papa taught you just in case, shoulder flexed against the recoil.

As you decide and decide again.

Fire.

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Why I love it

At the heart of Naomi Krupitsky’s thrilling debut is the paradox that while one’s family is typically a source of protection and comfort, there is also the potential for terrible harm. And when we’re talking about a “family” of Italian mobsters in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in the early- to mid-twentieth century, the stakes rise even higher.

As young girls, Sofia and Antonia are best friends and next-door neighbors whose fathers work for the mafia. But after a sudden act of violence starkly clarifies the hierarchy within the organization, Antonia escapes into the world of books, while Sofia develops her own thirst for power. Over twenty years, their lives weave together and drift apart over love affairs, crises, and childbirths. Krupitsky deftly dips into the point of view of other key characters as the novel hurtles toward its astonishing conclusion.

Written in startling, beautiful prose (you will be repeating sentences out loud, just to savor them, I promise), The Family explores how one lives with uncertainty and betrayal, and what happens when powerlessness turns into a destructive rage. I adored this book—a rare combination of a page-turner that reads like poetry.

Member ratings (18,059)

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Historical fiction
View all
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
The Women
The Lion Women of Tehran
Husbands & Lovers
Shelterwood
A Thousand Times Before
All We Were Promised
Spitting Gold
The Seventh Veil of Salome
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Great Divide
The Storm We Made
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
Lessons in Chemistry
The Frozen River
What We Kept to Ourselves
Take My Hand
The Last Russian Doll
The First Ladies
The House Is On Fire
River Sing Me Home
The Attic Child
Malibu Rising
The Book of Longings
Hester
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
The Nightingale
Daisy Jones & The Six
The Lincoln Highway
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
The Circus Train
Peach Blossom Spring
Hang the Moon
Booth
The Good Left Undone
The Perishing
The Postmistress of Paris
The Family
Things We Lost to the Water
The Spectacular
Still Life
Send for Me
The Magnolia Palace
The Bookbinder
China Room
This Tender Land
Atomic Love
All the Light We Cannot See
The Vanishing Half
Outlawed
The Four Winds
Independence
The Fountains of Silence
Libertie
Queen of Thieves
The Great Believers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Great Alone
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Rules of Civility
Circling the Sun
The Moor's Account
Jacqueline in Paris
Don't Cry for Me
The Christie Affair
Bloomsbury Girls
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Bronze Drum