Transcending all the limitations of ethnic literature and mobster stereotyping, David Prete flawlessly (and seemingly effortlessly) nails Italian-American life to the page and elevates it to a new place in American writing.To read David Prete is to read a fiction of effortlessness: his use of colloquial speech and simple language rather than self-consciously literary syntax; his preference for subtle truths over fancy artifice; above all his ability to get hold of real feeling-his gifts call to mind those of Raymond Carver. Only a profound talent can write stories that are at once simple and deep.David Prete is scary good. Having come to writing rather accidentally, after years spent working in the theater, he spilled out these stories with an effortless, natural grace that any seasoned writer would regard with jaw-dropping envy. He manages to write about characters who face loneliness, desire and despair in a way that stubbornly continues to insist that life is never despite all evidence to the contrary absent of hope. He is a heartbreaking talent, born to this line of work, our very own Bronx Chekhov.Yonkers, New York, finds its place on the literary map of America.