In 1950, Tony Bettellini is seven years old when his hauntingly beautiful mother, Clothilde, becomes the mistress of a powerful Harlem drug lord, Royston Carter, to escape a life of prostitution on the streets. Tony harbors deep inside him hidden terrors stemming from his early childhood. As the only white boy in a poor Negro gang, Tony experiences the colorful streets of Harlem. However, he despises the enigmatic Royston and runs away at the age of twelve, hanging around Times Square, where he struggles to survive, but develops his passion for acting.
In 1967, Tony, a handsome, young Irish-Italian, is outwardly warm, funny and happy-go-lucky. He works in a famous old restaurant in Times Square, which attracts movie and Broadway stars, showgirls and celebrities. Unable to afford decent accommodation, he lives in a slum tenement on the Lower East Side, His best friends are long-haired Sonny Gracia, a Vietnam vet and anti-war activist, who lost a lower leg and his Vietnamese sweetheart while serving in the war, and a cute, feisty, seven-year-old Negro boy, Billy, who is a street child. Tony is having a tumultuous affair with glamorous, international model and heiress, Veronica Idlewilde, when he falls madly in love with a beautiful blond girl from Virginia, Shenandoah Buchanan. Sonny, too, falls hopelessly in love - but with his best friend’s girl! Terrible things start to happen, which culminate in Tony being arrested for a brutal murder of a drug dealer. In the sensational trial that follows, the ruthless District Attorney for Manhattan, John Sirilli, is pushing for the death penalty ...
Set in the 1950s and the radical upheaval of the 1960s, Haunted by Shadows, is another unforgettable epic novel by the author Brenda George!
