New novel captures a piece of Brooklyn’s past
Brooklyn BookBeat: 'The El' is set in Borough Park in 1936
Brooklyn during the Great Depression, when movie houses like the Loew’s 46th Street Theater sponsored “Dish Nights,” families gathered around radios to hear Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” and kids took the trolley to Coney Island, is the time frame in which writer Catherine Gigante-Brown’s novel, “The El,” takes place.
Published by Volossal Publishing, “The El” is a family drama set in Borough Park during a six-month period in 1936. The action centers on the Paradiso family, a large, loving, close-knit Italian-American clan. “They don’t have a lot, but they have each other,” Gigante-Brown, 55, told the Brooklyn Eagle in a phone interview on Thursday.