Young Nicholas Petrovich is the grandson of Tony LaStoria. From the Eden created by the family patriarch must come a new offshoot, struggling to grow, to branch out, to become fully human. Torn from his roots, will young Nick find the mills of Milltown to be his fate? He gambles on his dream to return to Boston, to pursue those books that tempt him with hopes of achievement, advancement, and adventure. On a college campus, taught by Jesuits, he learns to think for himself, and he meets a new love, the audacious Sheila Blake, a farmer's daughter from the West of Ireland. Only in her arms will he complete his education. Only by her love will he become a man. Together Sheila and Nick must face Nixon's America and the debacle in Vietnam. Only such a love can bring Nick full circle, to take the path of exile chosen in the beginning, three generations before, by Tony LaStoria himself.
The Education of Nicholas Petrovich is Volume 4 of Eugene Christy's monumental saga of three generations of an American immigrant family. Watch for the final Volume 5 of The Twentieth Century Quintet coming soon this summer in 2021 from Adelaide Books.
What readers are saying about Vol 2 My Son The American:
I've shared Mr. Christy's previous novel with my 87 year old Mother, who is living in isolation, and lived through the times described by the novels. She loved it and felt like it accurately captured her own life experience.
Jeff Rosen, Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop
In the second volume of the American Quintet, author Eugene Christy explores the life of Tony LaStoria. Against the backdrop of America in the early days of the 20th century through WWII, Christy sets his characters within the context of American history. The background provides a rich tapestry against which the story unfolds. It is America and a true American story with lessons for today. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Richard W. Wise, award-winning author of Redlined and The French Blue
"There's an animal exuberance in Gene Christy's storytelling that makes you want to keep reading, from one trial and adventure to the next, all the way to the end." -Christopher Nye, Chairman of Orion Magazine


Eugene Christy is a novelist, poet and musician currently enjoying retirement in his home in the Berkshires. His maternal grandparents Antonio Scioscia and Giuseppina Fabrizio came from Alta Villa Irpina, near Avellino, in the South of Italy. He is a graduate of both Boston College and the University of Rhode Island, where he did his master’s degree in 1970, focusing on the authors of the Irish Literary Revival. At Boston College, he studied under Seán Ó Faoláin, and as a post-graduate under James Dickey and Larry McMurtry.

Appearing as Gene Christy, he was previously known around the Berkshires as the singer-songwriter and accordian-player who led The Dossers, the Irish-themed pub-band trio also featuring Bill Morrison and Rick Marquis.

His current project, seven years in the making, is called THE TWENTIETH CENTURY QUINTET, five novels telling the saga of Antonio LaStoria and his descendants through three generations in America from 1899 to 1972, now being published by Adelaide Books, New York and Lisbon, in 2020 and 2021. Volume 1 in this series of novels, ARRIVEDERCI NEW YORK, came out on Feb. 16th, 2020, and its sequel, MY SON THE AMERICAN, is due for release in August of 2020. Volumes 3, 4 and 5 will follow at Christmastime of 2020 and early in 2021.

After Volume 1, each novel in THE TWENTIETH CENTURY QUINTET is a sequel of the one before, forming a continuous narration of three generations of an archetypal American immigrant family from 1899 to 1972, and from Italy to America to Ireland, from the battlefields of World War II to the streets of Belfast and Derry during The Troubles

Title: The Education of Nicholas Petrovich
Author: Eugene Christy
Publisher: Adelaide Books
Publisher Website: https://adelaidebooks.org/
Publisher Email: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1955196147
Price: $22.30
Page Count: 520 pages
Formats: Paperback


Description of the company: ADELAIDE BOOKS LLC is a New York based independent company dedicated to publishing literary fiction and creative nonfiction. It was founded in July 2017 as an imprint of the Adelaide Literary Magazine, with the aim to facilitate publishing of novels, memoirs, and collections of short stories, poems, and essays by contributing authors of our magazine and other qualified writers.