Chuck Cascio

The Fire Escape Belongs In Brooklyn Chuck Cascio

The year is 1968. The world is crumbling around Mike Burns, a disillusioned Brooklyn youth attending his second year of college. His cousin and constant childhood companion, Sally-Boy, went missing two years ago. The two were incredibly close-they called themselves twins because they were born the same day-and Mike still thinks about Sally-Boy relentlessly, even talks to him...but nobody needs to know about that.

Adding to Mike's problems, his father angrily nags him to cut his hair; a professor fills his head with passionate, troubling ideals; a friend's draft dodge pulls him into incriminating circumstances; his Jewish roommate is in the doghouse with his own parents for dating the "wrong" girl; and Mike's love interest-well, she has secrets of her own to deal with. College parties make a quick fix to Mike's troubles, but after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., campus tensions rise to the breaking point. How will Mike deal with the turmoil of young adulthood-existential questions of morality, conscience, obligation-when everything in his life, familiar and new, is falling apart? And, above all, he longs for his cousin. He has to find Sally-Boy.