Book Synopsis
Although “A Time Apart,” is a novel, and the dialogue is imagined, it is based on actual events which were told in my book “The Last Best of All Times,” about my upbringing in West New Rochelle. This story is narrated by the protagonist, Bobby Belmonte, who, in the latter part of his life, is reminiscing about those early years, as the world is evolving from the devastating effects of the COVID- 19 pandemic. It centers on the summer before his last
year at Saint Joseph’s elementary school, transporting the reader back to “A Time Apart” from the present, based on his boyish recollections of his family, the school, the church, the Boys Club, and the games they invented, and the special joys brought by each season of the year. And tells of his Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn type of youthful adventures and mishaps centered around a cast of colorful and unforgettable characters who inhabit the streets of “the West,” an Italian neighborhood in New Rochelle, N.Y. - surrounded by a wealth of love and warmth from his parents and a seemingly unlimited number of relatives and Paisans, who were only there when they needed them – sort of a “Charlie Brown” type of existence - but without the anxiety.
It will hopefully allow those who were brought up in similar neighborhoods to relive many of their fondest memories of those years, and of others, who have never had such experiences, to be emerged in “A Time Apart” from all the harsh realities the world is currently enduring.
Bob Semenza
AKA Bobby “Chesty” Belmonte