Buy North End Boy

A New Jersey 1970s Coming of Age Memoir by Kevin P. Brady

In the summer of 1978, a group of friends who called Elizabeth, New Jersey their hometown, were just starting to come into their own. These seven young men in their early 20s were enjoying a time of their lives with few ambitions and fewer responsibilities – until a tragic event jarred them into the realities of adulthood. In only two short days, lives were upended and dreams shattered.  Life altering decisions about families, careers and destinies had to be made. Will the bond that held them all together over the years become untethered?

The 1970s were challenging times. A cold war, race riots, high unemployment and inflation battered a nation already struggling from the after effects of a losing battle in Vietnam. In the heart of New Jersey, the city of Elizabeth was dealing with additional economic blows thanks to the slow demise of its manufacturing facilities and key businesses such as the once vibrant Singer Sewing Machine Works and Bayway Refinery. Those families in the working-class neighborhood of Elizabeth’s North End were particularly impacted with many members employed by these companies as unskilled laborers. Hours diminished, and eventually, entire workforces were erased. Political and police corruption along with organized crime added an undercurrent to this already precarious backdrop.

North End Boy explores the unexpected twists and turns this close group of friends must endure, alongside the struggles of a city that was once at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, but now is slowly decaying economically and morally.

Loosely autobiographical, Kevin P. Brady’s North End Boy is a meditation on 1970’s urban America, as seen through the eyes of a young man from New Jersey with immigrant sensibilities and working-class roots.