Hart Island

Hart Island has served as a potter's field for more than a century holding over a million indigent unclaimed or unknown New Yorkers' bodies-and yet it is little-known even among locals. In this absorbing and elegiac story on this island shaped like a miniature boot of Italy Gary Zebrun explores overlapping connections of family crime sexuality and human decency.<br> <br> Driven out of the Coast Guard during the days of Don't Ask Don't Tell Sal Cusumano hauls coffins to Hart Island with a burial crew of Rikers Island inmates and guards. Only there can he fully leave his family troubles on Staten Island behind: Justin his adopted brother and lover; his mother Ida slipping rapidly into dementia; the memory of Francesco his father a bookie gunned down on his stoop; and his brother Antony a Manhattan homicide detective moonlighting with the mob. But the island ceases to be his sanctuary after Antony ensnares him-and others-in a crime that involves a nocturnal visit to the potter's field. <br> <br> This compelling and intricately plotted novel moves through the shadows as its characters yearn for belonging and forgiveness. Set on the eve of the COVID pandemic it is part love story part crime novel and part mystery.