Rosalie Bonanno

Rosalie Profaci's marriage to Bill Bonanno in 1956 united two powerful New York Mafia families. Growing up in a protective cocoon, the bride was ignorant of her heritage--"I did not understand, never had understood, and probably never would"--and this made for a difficult marriage. In this sense, her book resembles Antoinette Giancana's Mafia Princess ( LJ 2/15/84), but the latter provides a better sense of Mafia life as a whole. The venerated "code of silence" means little to the Bonannos: they were the subject of Gay Talese's Honor Thy Father ( LJ 12/1/71), and family head Joe Bonanno wrote A Man of Honor ( LJ 8/83). Amazingly, Rosalie is still Mrs. Bonanno, despite the belief articulated in her brief, earnest, affecting book that Mafia men are "rats." Appropriate for women's studies and organized crime collections.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis… (mehr)