Everyone sees Isador for the dreamer he is—he’s a talker and ambitious to a fault. Everyone, that is, except his wife, Rose, who ignores the warnings. She is in love and determined to follow Isador wherever he leads, never imagining she’ll find herself sitting across a table from one of Revere Beach’s Prohibition-era mob bosses. Or that she’ll seek help from Jacob Moll her young neighbor, and from Samuel Bloom—better known as Earl the Ear—one of the mob’s most feared leg-breakers.
The setting for Rona Simmons’s second novel is no accident. The beach at Revere, once known as “America’s Beach,” was home to Wonderland Park, an extravagant amusement park some consider a precursor to Disneyland. It was unlike any park seen before. But Wonderland proved unsustainable, bankrupting its founders and dashing their dreams. The park soon vanished, leaving behind only memories and postcards.