My Works
Living at the Edge of the World
A searing, true story of New York City in the 1980's:
During the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, with AIDS and homelessness out of control, sixteen year old Tina leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join her new friend, April Savino, a wild and charismatic teenage runaway, living in the station's deepest tunnels amidst the homeless and drug addicted.
Soon she's caught up in in a romantic relationship with April and finds herself following in her footsteps: bingeing on crack cocaine, stealing, rolling drunks, and panhandling to support their habits and to survive on the New York City streets. This is Tina's raw, riveting account of life among the hardcore homeless, her addiction to crack, her love for April, and what she is forced to do to support her addiction and her love.
After serving several jail terms for assault and robbery and enduring April Savino's sudden, brutal death,Tina struggles to make her painful way back to the world of the living.
New: Living at the Edge of the World is now available on Kindle and Nook.
Winnie: My Life in the Institution
Winnie Sprockett was just six years old in 1938 when she was committed by her foster mother to a state institution for mentally retarded females, where she remained most of her life.
Despite her isolation and occasional harsh and even cruel treatment, she grew into a compassionate and generous woman. Among the remarkable things about Winnie, one stands out: though she received only a fourth grade education in the institution and had a mental age of approximately nine years old, she wrote her autobiography.
With the help of journalist Jamie Pastor Bolnick, who conducted many hours of interviews with Winnie to flesh out the original autobiography, she tells a story that is both chilling and inspiring, a story that at times sounds unbelievable but is, according to public and medical records and those who knew her best, true.
Winnie's book was published to critical acclaim and made into a beloved NBC-TV Movie of the Week starring Meredith Baxter Birney in the title role. After more than twenty years out of print, a new and revised edition of Winnie: My Life in the Institution has been published. Go to http://www.book-arts-press.com/Winnie.html or click on the link on this page for more information.
The TV movie version of Winnie is now available for viewing on YouTube.