Biography

The author, Lewis Brischi, was born in Brooklyn, New York and moved to the Catskills after World War II. He attended Cairo Central School, but left in his senior year and graduated from Oyster Bay High on Long Island in 1953. In the early sixties along with his friend Andy Camputaro they put together the Double (R) Rodeo Company which Andy still operates.

Involved in two of the better known court cases in Greene County -- the fire at the Conca D'Oro, in Catskill and another with the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. He won both cases, but subsequently lost a case in Federal Court in Brooklyn in 1985. Sentenced to five years in prison, like his boyhood hero William Sidney Porter, better known as O' Henry, he began writing.

Sacco Bones, a novel about horse-racing, wise guys, and smart dames is written in a Runyonesque style with a laugh on every page and a twisting surprise in every chapter. The story centers around the summer of 1973 and opens in Brooklyn, but quickly moves upstate to an old hotel in the Northern Catskill Mountains. Much of the book is based on the life of the author, known as Upstate Looie and a plethora of characters known as his cronies. Told with tongue in cheek humor, the story moves along with many antidotes, while the thread of the tale weaves around the shenanigans of the guys and dolls. The plot centers around the behind the scene machinations of a ninety year old man who adeptly manipulates a cast of many personalities at the Three Maples Hotel.

The novel, Sacco Bones, is 564 pages with some of the author's drawings at the beginning of each chapter.