Shine Paperback

Shine is about Americo, a nearly twelve-year-old boy living with his crippled father in a mostly Italian slum in 1942 Queens, an outer part of New York City. With the father's monthly disability checks and the son's earnings shining shoes, they meagerly get by. While out for a walk one evening, the father is murdered. Struggling with this catastrophe the boy learns he has a strong and resourceful intelligence, and takes very much to heart his father's mantra, "Stay out of the system!" He continues to live in the privacy of their hovel, shining shoes and forging his father's signature on the disability checks that keep arriving. He is smart and adapts quickly, until one day among his customers he recognizes the man who killed his father.