Johnny Critelli

Set in Utica, New York, in the 1950s , Johnny Critelli evokes the richness, conflicts, lusts, and longings of an Italian-American community trying to embrace American culture as it clings to its own. In Utica, food, family, religion, and Joe DiMaggio are equally transcendent. Every extra penny in town in invested in Little League in a romantic homage to athletic greatness and to a Yankee line-up studded with Italian-American names. At the heart of this story are three generations of the author's own family and Johnny Critelli, a mythical orphan who may have disappeared years before…