Leaving Pico

by Frank Gaspar

"Frank X. Gaspar has crafted a coming-of-age-in-ethnic-America novel set in the Portuguese community of Provincetown, Massachusetts. For narrator Josie Carvalho, a single summer brings great loss and abrupt change, but also a new understanding of his place in the world."--BOOK JACKET. "In the insular Portuguese fishing community of the Cape, Josie's life has been shaped by the annual influx of summer tourists (who are largely oblivious of the locals) and his great aunt Theophila's fervent if idiosyncratic Catholicism (she has visions and keeps a private shrine to the saints). The community is also sharply divided between the Picos like himself (whose ancestors hailed from the Azores) and the Lisbons (whose forebears came directly from the old country). The counterweight to these forces has been the boy's relationship with his grandfather John Joseph, a drunk, clam-poaching old man who is nevertheless a sly and tricksterish master storyteller."--BOOK JACKET. "Josie's shaky religious fai