John Vocale

A Tale of Two Times John Vocale

According to the front-page photo in the (New York) Daily News, my father was "Murdered Gangland Style." I was three years old. The assassination was most likely ordered by a mob insurance broker in order to collect on a large life insurance policy that my father provided as collateral for a business loan. After my father's death, my distraught mother began a downward spiral into substance abuse from which she never recovered. The insurance broker, later convicted of another killing while under witness protection, was never charged with my father's murder. Based on those events, I've written a time-travel novel, "A Tale of Two Times," about how a middle-aged son battles to save his younger parents' previously doomed lives. In present-day Florida, Billy Volante leans against a large oak tree in his backyard, only to keep falling---through the tree -- into 1961, exactly fifty-six years into the past, into the same Gulf Coast resort town where he now resides and where his parents took winter vacations. Billy and his free-spirited girlfriend, Carrie Anne, decide to pose as a married couple to warn his young father, Johnny Volante, of the looming 1964 murder. Seeking to build a friendship before revealing his identity, the older Billy takes his father on a fishing trip, only to stumble upon a vacationing mob attorney, Herman Goldman, who will order the future murder. When Goldman meets Billy, things change. Will Johnny Volante believe Billy, a man more than twice his age, is his son?If Billy saves his father's life, what becomes of his future and the future of the girl he loves? Will Goldman complicate things, even more, by adding another target to Billy's lifesaving mission?Obviously, there's only one way to find out!