Gemini Joe: Memoirs of Brooklyn

The earliest memory I had of my father was at a family wedding when I was four years old. I could still see my mother smiling and dancing, happy to be with her family. My father sat at a table, glaring as she glided across the dance floor. He drank one scotch on the rocks after another until jealousy took hold of him, and his rage cut the evening short. I wanted to love him but found it difficult to please him. I wanted to please him but knew it was impossible. When he divorced my mother, I felt obligated to cut him out of my life out of loyalty to her. Until one day, I received a letter along with a poem. I didn't know this side of my father. Impressed by his words, I asked him to tell me about his childhood. As I collected the missing pieces of his life, I had an opportunity to understand the true nature of the man buried deep beneath the alcoholic.The runt of the litter, Gemini Joe is no stranger to tears. His life is a story-following the Great Depression and his parents struggle to provide for his family. Survival in his powerful, sometimes cruel family was not easy. Although he remembers with affection and occasional humor the holidays, his childhood friends, his mother and grandmother, his tough, bullying brothers and indifferent sister, his family was too much for him. He found acceptance in a bottle of scotch. Health issues beginning at birth and compounded by an addiction to cigarettes from the age of seven. In the end, he managed to conquer his addictions, but was it too late?