About the Author:
I was eight months old when my mother, due to extreme poverty after World War 11 was forced to place my older brother and I into a Catholic institution. Three years later we were moved to the first of two foster homes. Those were not the best years of our lives. Discipline was harsh, while nurturing and affection, unfortunately, was absent. My brother was ten and I was eight when my father remarried and was finally allowed custody and brought us home. Our world changed totally, from the monotony of suburban consistency, to the variety of city life. I was 16 in 1961, the year of Diego’s story. Living there at that time helped me describe growing up in a New York City neighborhood like Boerum Hill. I remember the wonderful mix of people, not only immigrants from foreign countries, but also the poor from our southern states and from the Protectorate of Puerto Rico. It mattered not, the prejudices and differences of our parents, we as children cared less where your roots were from as long as you lived in our neighborhood and could play stick ball. I stayed in Brooklyn, worked, and eventually retired from the Department of Sanitation. I then bought a New York City Taxi Cab, enduring traffic and congestion for three hectic years before finally selling the medallion in 1994. Immediately after that, I travelled west in a 30 foot RV to escape city life and to see the states. It was a wonderful experience, but after 2 1/2 years on the road, at the age of 51, I needed something more meaningful and fulfilling for myself. I found that in writing, and like a lot of writers, I began with poems. Eventually, I wrote my first novel "Yesterday in the Caverns Dark; of Fire, Spirits and Men". (One man's odyssey during the Paleolithic era) I enjoyed writing Diego’s Brooklyn, because the character represents the child of my youth, an unsuspecting trusting boy with simple dreams and a warm smile for those around him. He could have been a friend, a neighbor, the kid down the block, or perhaps, in some ways, he was me. Put together the everyday mingling of the well to do with the average Joe, the corner grocery store owner, the poor, and let’s not forget the criminally insane, and you have the actors and makings for a play about life in Brooklyn, a play I was more than happy to be a part of. ---Adrian Del Valle
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