Snapshots in Prose

<p>Richard Leonard's <i>Snapshots in Prose</i> is a collector's album of evocative tales about Jamie Lachlan's coming of age in mid-20th-century New York when the city was the world of neighborhood movie palaces and black-and-white television old people leaning on windowsills above and children playing on streets below and teenagers sitting on stoops and car fenders listening to rock and roll on transistor radios.</p><p>Growing up on the East Side of Manhattan Jamie was a daycare runaway and bullied first-grade brawler Saturday morning movie cowboy and World War II warrior Central Park rowboat pirate and traffic-stopping horseback rider...</p><p>When Jamie was a teenager he was a fire-escape gymnast and condemned-building explorer Holy Ghost slow dancer and Chubby Checker twister redeemed classroom daydreamer and infamous catechism sinner...</p><p>And in 1965 nineteen-year-old Jamie Lachlan went steady with eighteenyear-old Maddy Ferrara and fell in love.</p>