Bold as Brass

Bold as Brass is a collection of twenty-four stories set in Waterbury Connecticut once Brass Capital of the World. All the stories are works of fiction. They are the author's look into long-ago lives both of her Irish Catholic family and of imagined characters who might have joined them in their daily goings on in a period of time that stretches from the thirties through the fifties. Whether the characters are swimming at Scovill's Dam on a hot summer day and wondering what is beneath that water or telling stories around the kitchen table on a rainy afternoon making a pilgrimage to Saint Anne de Beaupre in Canada to request a baby or bearing gifts to a birthday celebration with mixed results their stories are presented in a way that shows how insightful commonplace occurrences can prove to be.Bold as Brass is the authors second book deliciously anecdotal and a true companion to her first book The View from Cracker Hill a memoir of 1950s Waterbury. These are stories of working-class people of whom Betty notes in Saturday Night Swells the idea that ordinary people can have extraordinary moments is a wonderful discovery. The author says I echo Betty's sentiment and I am delighted to share these stories.