PEPO

Letters from an incarcerated bank robber to his sister recount a life of crime and years behind bars in this epistolary memoir compiled by Donna Papacosta.

Life growing up in Queens in the 1960s was hard for John “Pepo” Papacosta. His dad abandoned the family when he was 12, and his early influences were all petty criminals (including his mom). Yet from his letters included here, it’s obvious that Pepo was clever, funny, and a hard worker; he also struggled with alcoholism. Desperate for money to dig himself out of yet another mess, Pepo ended up robbing a bank and getting away with it. It went so well that two months later, wearing the same outfit, he stood in line at the same bank to repeat his previously successful crime—but this time he got nabbed. (The author humorously refers to this incident as “a second withdrawal from a financial institution without filling out the proper form.” Pepo served time in prison and, while incarcerated, started writing letters to his sister Donna Papacosta, who later edited these missives for this memoir. Pepo’s astute reflections bounce between stories of his juvenile criminal hijinks in Queens and upstate New York to his dehumanizing years in prison. His entrepreneurial endeavors, such as working at the local barbershop and an illegal bookmaking operation, bring to mind J.R. Moehringer’s coming-of-age memoir, The Tender Bar (2005). But while Moehringer attended Yale and became a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Pepo’s life was marred by alcohol-induced shenanigans and bad decisions. As we learn from his correspondence, Pepo often dreamed of owning a hot dog cart, and readers may find themselves rooting for this entrepreneurial triumph. Ultimately the story fails to satisfy, mainly because Pepo never seems to grow as a human being or learn from his mistakes. While it’s hard not to empathize on some level with this wayward man and hardscrabble life story, there is little inspirational or instructive content here.

Mildly entertaining tales of a misspent youth and an adult life of hard knocks.