YONKERS Yonkers! Is a coming-of-age story of race and redemption. Cookie Colangelo is an unlikely heroine. Being a good girl has gotten Cookie nowhere, so she’s become a small-time drug dealer, a troublemaker, and an indomitable force to reckon with, one who will take no prisoners as she cuts a mighty swath through the city of Yonkers. I’m a gangster, Cookie says to herself. And no one’s going to mess with me. Cookie is going down the wrong path until shy black boy Herman Lynch comes into her life. Born with a harelip, Herman Lynch is a black B-boy, a natural dancer, who has had no formal dance training. He lives near Slow Bomb, the Schlobohm Housing Projects. The other black boys don’t like Herman and think he’s not black enough. The Italian girls of Yonkers don’t like Cookie, saying she’s too white. Together, Cookie and Herman explore the heart of racial prejudice in working-class Yonkers circa 1969-71. Before she met Herman Lynch, Cookie had no experience with black people except for Mrs. Kerry, her kindergarten teacher. Someone had warned Cookie that if she touched Mrs. Kerry, she would turn black. Cookie thought about that for a while and it made her scared of Mrs. Kerry. As soon as she came home from school, she flew in through the front door and checked the bathroom mirror to see if she had turned black. It became a game. Every time she came home from school, she headed straight to the bathroom, peered into the mirror, then studied her face from many angles and looked down at her hands. She had not turned black. YONKERS Yonkers! is rich with history and exacting detail. The Vietnam War has divided the country, Richard Nixon is in the White House and activists are marching in the streets. The story of Cookie Colangelo and Herman Lynch is told against the backdrop of the music of the times from Woodstock to the deaths of Blind Owl Alan Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. A chief leitmotif throughout YONKERS Yonkers! is the metaphor and imagery of the owl. More than anything, Cookie wanted to meet Blind Owl Alan Wilson, the lead guitarist for the blues-rock band Canned Heat. She thinks the Blind Owl will understand her the way no one else can, and she is devastated when he dies. Surprising revelations include the true identity of Herman Lynch’s grandmother, and the protection provided to Herman Lynch and Cookie Colangelo by the mysterious Louie Santamassino. No one was sure how Louie Santamassino got his money or what he did for a living, but there was always the certainty that he was looking out for them. It was kind of like having a weird uncle as their guardian angel. Everyone accuses Herman and Cookie of being a romantic item to the point that they are cajoled and bullied until violence erupts in a heart-wrenching attack against Herman Lynch. Although Cookie and Herman are inextricably linked and as close as two people can be, they are not sexually lovers, and yet their story is a testament to the highest form of love. "Author and PR specialist Patricia Vaccarino's new book, YONKERS Yonkers! A Story of Race and Redemption, is an enriching and beautiful narrative of friendship, breaking social boundaries, and music. In the time of Woodstock, the Vietnam War, the Rolling Stones and more, YONKERS Yonkers! looks at social and racial conventions of a tumultuous and changing time period." - BookTrib Author Patricia Vaccarino may split her time now between Seattle and the Oregon Coast, but she drew on her own experiences growing up in New York to create this multifaceted coming-of-age novel, "YONKERS Yonkers!" So let's go back in time to 1969, when Yonkers was a tough, working-class city, rife with racial tensions, whispered-about mob associations and a hippie culture that had overrun the local gem of a park in order to turn on, tune in and drop out. "YONKERS Yonkers!" is curse, lament, taunt and, ultimately, whoop. Vaccarino writes with zest and in teeming detail. She seems to have trouble bringing this book to a close, but that's understandable. This is a mesmerizing tale of a girl with gumption. - Coast Weekend The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. A troubled white girl and a shy gay black boy triumph over racism in Yonkers 1969. My name is Concetta Mary Bernadette Colangelo, but everyone calls me "Cookie." I'm a gangster and no one's going to mess with me. Aside from being a gangster, I am a hippie too. I'm going to Woodstock and no one's going to stop me. -Cookie Colangelo, Aug 16, 1969 Patricia Vaccarino is originally from Yonkers, New York. After college, she traveled across the country in a battered Chevy Impala on I-40 and up the California coast on Pacific Highway 101 to "see America" and landed in Seattle, where she worked as a paralegal in antitrust law, and later went to law school. She began writing professionally--articles, copy, scripts, and press releases a