Gullboy: A Novel: The Inconceivable Life of Franco Pajarito Zanpa Hardback - 2005

A month into the rocky marriage of Ernesto Zanpa and Venus Rojo - two twentysomethings stumbling into adulthood - Ernesto discovers a baby in a seagull's nest near their Brighton Beach bungalow. No ordinary baby, the boy has wing-like arms and a soft sheen of white feathers. Despite the baby's peculiarity, Ernesto is drawn to this gullboy, and decides, against Venus's wishes, to raise the founding as his own. He names the baby Franco, after his own late father, and abandons his life of loafing to support the child. Within a year, Franco grows with bird-like speed from infant to teenager, Ernesto matures from beach bum to workaholic chef, and Venus, tired of her husband's inattention and with ambitions of her own, transforms herself into an Internet porn star. Add in a reprobate attorney, a resentful cop, an overzealous surgeon, a lusty accountant, a pair of Russian mobsters, and a teenage siren named Trina, and life gets more than a little complicated. But perched at the center of this Brooklyn maelstrom where everything's slightly askew is our gullboy - an extraordinary child trying grow up in a world that won't stop staring at him. Toole, Wade Rubenstein's Gullboy is a story about mistaking the best in ourselves for the worst and vice versa - a heartrending novel with a hectic energy, an expansive view, and an unflinching eye.