The World of Mob Adjacent
Mob ad·ja·cent. mäb / əˈjās(ə)nt / Adjective. Next to or adjoining a group of people known for being disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.
When a powerful mob boss in Depression-era Chicago becomes indebted to humble fruit peddler Mickey Gentile, Mickey’s family begins a half-century mob adjacent journey – not in the mob, but near the mob, close enough to enjoy the perks but far enough removed to avoid the danger. Mickey’s son Mike makes childhood friends with men who will one day rise to the top of the nascent Chicago Outfit
Nightclub entrepreneur Mike Gentile manages a tricky balancing act: Suburban husband and father, nightclub owner, respected member of the community, and longtime friend to notorious mobsters. Heat, hoodlums and Hollywood stars filter in and out of his family’s lives as casually as the milkman and the mailman. No one ever wondered about the effect being steeped in a world of crime and criminals on a pair of impressionable young boys when The Wonder Years collides with The Sopranos.
Born the day the stock market crashed in 1929 and ushered in the Great Depression; Mike grew up in Chicago’s Little Italy alongside the boys who became the next generation of post-Capone mobsters. They weren’t criminals then, just kids from the neighborhood. Members of the mob remained a constant presence as protectors, patrons, and occasionally Santa Claus. Career criminals became trusted friends and honorary uncles – people like Sam Giancana, Frank Cerone, his cousin Jackie Cerone, and an assortment of hoodlums, gangsters, bone-breakers, second-story guys, dirty cops, and dodgy lawyers. Anyone might turn up at their front door. And Mike’s boys were watching.
