Just out of college during the post-Vietnam malaise of the late 1970s, Mitch Manzello dreams of becoming a professor. But his distant parents pass on paying for grad school. He takes a placeholder job as a cub reporter in ill-named Garden City, a fraying suburb of a Southern capital. When not writing puff pieces or nursing his purple AMC Marlin through an unusually snowy winter, Mitch stumbles onto an investigation of large-scale corruption—a career-making story that would topple the region’s most powerful figures. Stymied in romance, culturally adrift in the “Shallow South,” and at times ethically challenged, Mitch races to break the scandal before his newspaper collapses under its own internal fraud.
New York native Michael Leccese spent two years in North Carolina before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1977 and, then Boulder, Colorado, in 1993. He’s worked as a journalist, editor, flak, and nonprofit executive. Nonfiction books include Short Bikes Ride In and Around Washington, D.C. (Globe-Pequot Press, 1988), which made the Washington Post’s bestseller list tucked between Bill Cosby and Richard Feynman. As a freelance writer, he’s published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Historic Preservation magazine and, once, a pet column on ferrets in USA Weekend. This is his first novel.
What readers are saying
“Part Catcher in the Rye and part Confederacy of Dunces, Leccese’s marvelously drawn characters and situations strike a note with anyone who has held a bad job, wrestled with ambiguous relationships, or witnessed basic human folly. His astonishing eye for period detail evokes the colorful struggles of entering adulthood in the late 1970s.”--
Jonathan Walters, former executive editor, Governing magazine, and author of Good Press, Bad Press, Depressed; Governing's Survival Guide for Public Officials
“A fascinating time capsule of a novel.”
—Wilson Koewing, author of Rolling on the Bottom
“First Draft is funny, combining a coming of age story with comic noir, if such a genre exists. Explores such themes as architecture and urban life; love and its discontents; and what it means to be Italian-American, or Italian and wondering if you’re American.”
—Roe Wall, author of During-the-Event
“Creates an immediate empathy with a bright college grad shoehorned into a delivery boy's job. The dialog is believable and spot on. Wacky humor lightens the sadness of Mitch's predicaments.”
—J. William Thompson, former editor of Landscape Architecture magazine, and author of From Memory to Memorial and Ending Up Creative
“The Wire's David Simon would admire the descriptive balance of person, place, and thing.”
—John Hersey, urban planner
“Bildungsroman. I always wanted to use that word. First Draft is its definition — a picaresque journey of fledgling journalist Mitch Manzello as he stumbles through his first job, nascent love life, and moral quandaries. Join Mitch and his purple AMC Marlin as they navigate the ethically ambiguous late 1970s. It’s a great ride—funny, touching, universal.”
—Alice L. Powers, editor of Italy in Mind and the In Mind armchair travel series.
“In this playful tale of newspapering, big-city corruption, and missed opportunities, Leccese combines his love of storytelling, metaphor, and urban design. It is fun to follow this quirky guy coming of age in a special time and place.”
—Richard Epstein, architect, Boulder, Colorado
To order a copy of First Draft, A Novel.
$16 signed and delivered for a printed copy. Please email me your address and allow two weeks for delivery.
BigGuy@michaelleccesewriter.com
$8 for a digital copy (PDF identical to printed book; reads on tablet)
