Mario Puzo meets Elena Ferrante in Krupitsky's dynamite debut novel, a decades-spanning saga beginning in 1920s Brooklyn. "There is no easy way to untangle what is Family and what is family," her characters realize to their chagrin and peril. Daughters of influential Mafiosos, fiery Sofia Colicchio and her introverted best friend, Antonia Russo, know their families aren't typical. Schoolmates avoid them, their mothers constantly worry, and on Sundays they attend a large Italian feast at their fathers' boss' home. When Antonia's papa tries to escape his profession, he gets "disappeared," a terrible warning against future betrayals. Sofia and Antonia are resilient, multifaceted young women whose bond occasionally strains as they test the boundaries of independence, and their choice of husbands ensnares them further in Family business. Depicting twentieth-century Mafia families primarily from the female viewpoint is a fabulous concept that Krupitsky carries out with aplomb. Perspective shifts are smooth, and the backdrops of Prohibition and WWII are superbly realized. Italian American traditions (including delicious casseroles) are highlighted, and the unique immigration stories show why and how Italian and Jewish newcomers get pulled into organized crime. Fans of Adriana Trigiani and Lynda Cohen Loigman will inhale this tense, engrossing novel about family ties, women's friendships, and the treacherous complications of loyalty.

In this nicely written but slow-moving debut, two fierce heroines, daughters of mobsters, come of age in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, in the 1930s and '40s. First-generation Sicilian American Sofia Colicchio grows up learning that "Family is everything." It's a bitter pill. When her best friend Antonia Russo's father, Carlo, is caught skimming the books and "disappeared," Antonia becomes even more dependent on the "Family" that killed her father, as it provides for her and her mother. As the power of Sofia's father, Joey, grows, so does Sofia's attraction to seizing power of her own, though there's no place for women in the organization, while Antonia tries to distance herself from the Family. Krupitsky follows Sofia and Antonia from early childhood through marriage and motherhood as each fight to carve out their independence and sense of self, and Antonia faces months of postpartum depression. Their experiences are shaped by WWII and a country where immigrants like Joey absorb such messages as "stay with your own kind; take the jobs we do not want," forcing them to carve out their own version of an "American dream" that must be "gleaned, bought or stolen." While a violent showdown at the end involving Sofia and Antonia feels jarring, Krupitsky beautifully captures their day-to-day lives under never-ending tension. The women's rich stories make this worthwhile. Agent: Dana Murphy, Book Group. (Nov.)

Two young Italian American women grow up under the shadow of organized crime in the 20th century. It's hard to find fresh ways to write about the American mob in the wake of the cultural juggernaut that was The Sopranos. Krupitsky (who credits the HBO series in her acknowledgments) opts for looking back. She approaches the story through the eyes of two young women who grow up inside--and yet, because of their gender, outside--the family. Set in Brooklyn during the late 1920s through the late 1940s, the novel follows Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo as they grow up in an Italian American bubble. Sofia is impulsive, inquisitive, popular; Antonia, introspective and studious. Other children aren't allowed to play with them, but this is not a problem, because they have each other. Their families are close, their fathers in the business of "helping people," they believe. But then Antonia's father disappears, and the dynamic shifts. Tenuously connected through weekly Sunday dinners, Sofia and Antonia drift apart, grow up, and come together again as their adult options narrow. What can they do besides get married and have children? Can they escape the family--and do they even want to escape? Krupitsky's novel lacks the depth of Elena Ferrante's work, but the story is fast-paced and readable, and the ebb and flow between Sofia and Antonia as secrets threaten their friendship propel the reader forward. Krupitsky can construct a memorable image: Someone the girls dislike has teeth that "crowd into his mouth like commuters on a train platform." But the finale feels unlikely, playing out in a way that can't possibly be as seamless as Krupitsky makes it out to be. In the end, the novel turns out to be a little too facile for its own good. A readable but somewhat shallow story about friendship and loyalty. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.