A Season in Queens
(Morgan James Publishing)
In the sun porch windows on 240th Street in Cambria Heights, little gold starred banners hang their emblems of cheerless pride—pathetic titles to the ownership of loss.
1946: In Cambria Heights, an outlying working-class enclave of New York City the people, having lived through years of calamitous losses and fears, are ready to revive the modestly idyllic life of their cherished little neighborhood—but their idyll is imperiled.
GI's are still returning seriously wounded in the mind and emotionally as well as physically maimed. This while the worst polio epidemic in American history menaces to spread through the community troubled by a "Cold War" that forebodes a more catastrophic real one again—and, in particular, the idyll is defiled by an outbreak of racism when a black air ace and war hero returns "home."
Erin Burke, our imaginary heroine, takes us on a time trip there––wedding her own imagination to her memory in her novel about her fateful coming of age.