Divorced from the Mob: My Journey from Organized Crime to Independent Woman - Hardcover

Giovino, Andrea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786713550 ISBN 13: 9780786713554

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2004

Synopsis

Divorced from the Mob breaks the mob code of silence and describes the life of Andrea Giovino, a woman born and bred into the Mafia, and her inspirational escape. Sexy and street-smart, Giovino married a mob drug runner, earned a seat at ‘80s nightclub tables next to John Gotti, and took an emotional and bloody ride through organized crime. Hers was also the task of keeping her children safe—keeping the guns out of reach, washing bloodstains out of her husband’s clothes—and maintaining the household’s front as a model of American domesticity in her quietly luxurious Staten Island neighborhood of doctors and lawyers, all the while helping manage a criminal enterprise that raked in money. A murder, a DEA set-up, and FBI wiretaps finally brought Giovino, her husband, and her brother to the brink of prison. Defiantly, Giovino chose to retain her identity, facing down threats against her life and courageously divorcing herself and her children from the Gambino world of organized crime. Now a model working parent, Giovino has penned this perspective of mob life largely unexplored by film and literature, and a headline-grabbing expose of organized crime told in a voice readers will never forget.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrea Giovino, a mother of four, refused to enter the Witness Protection Program despite knowing there was a contract out on her life. Indicted in 1992 with her husband and brother on charges of conspiring to distribute marijuana and cocaine, she was relocated in return for her husband and brother's cooperation with the government. She currently lives in rural Pennsylvania.

From Publishers Weekly:

When Giovino was growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, her mother hosted an illegal gambling operation for some mob-connected guys two days a week in the family's basement. Apart from the money, this boosted her mother's prestige, since "in a poor neighborhood, even being close to criminals was a status symbol." After seventh grade, Giovino dropped out of school and spent her days doing odd jobs and babysitting; nights were for cruising the clubs, and she ended up pregnant and married. Husband number one folded fast, but in spite of Giovino's insistence that "[m]otherhood made me flame-retardant," she spent the next few decades falling for a series of wrong guys. Giovino's problem? She was attracted to rich and powerful men, which, where she lived, meant men connected with the mob. Eventually, she was arrested in a DEA sting and decided to come clean. In spite of occasional spurts of psychology jargon (her mom "negatively... influenced our psychological development," etc.), Giovino's voice rings true. She'll gush about her latest love, and thenâ€"as if sensing readers' skepticismâ€"snarl, "So fucking what if maybe all that is just cliché on top of cliché." Later, Giovino considers the camaraderie between her husband and his buddy after they whacked someone: "Once you killed with somebody it was like getting married, a kind of private ceremony, but since nobody could keep their mouths completely shut... it was a public declaration of your commitment to each other.... It's sick and sad that it takes murder to bring men together." Great literature it's not, but Giovino's memoir is raw and very real.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0786713550
• ISBN 13: 9780786713554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320