"The New Americans" is done!

2020 has been rough year for everyone, me included. But I did manage to get some stuff accomplished. And, at the top of that list, is the completion of my dad's novel, which I'm calling The New Americans.

It's a big one. 240,000 words and 1,000 typewritten pages!  But it's a great story and I've very proud of it. Now, however, comes the challenging task of securing a literary agent and then, hopefully, a publisher. In that spirit, today I sent out 35 queries to various agents across the country who handle this type of book. Fingers crossed!

What's that you ask? What's a query? 

Well, the short answer is that a query is a sales pitch for a novel. They tend to be just one page in length, and they're less about storytelling then about salesmanship. The idea is to entice aneditor or agent into requesting the entire manuscript. And, believe me, that's not as easy as it sounds!  Most publishing professionals, at least those who work with book-length works, see dozens (maybe hundreds) of queries in a single day! So, to stand out, you need to "cook with gas," as the old saying goes.

So, in the spirit of transparency, I thought I'd share with you all the query I drafted over the past weekend. This is what I hope will earn me an agent for The New Americans.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”

Philadelphia, 1915. For the last twenty years, five million Italian and Sicilian immigrants have poured into the city, bringing with them their food, their languages, and their culture of honor and family above all. But, on arrival, they’re met with derision, distrust, and often outright violence. They’re called “guineas,” “wops,” and “fucking dagos.” Some have fled poverty, some politics to reach this new land. And some are simply trying to stay alive.

This is the story of three of them.

Meet Peter Donatello, eldest son of a widowed peasant woman in central Sicily. A young man of honor and obligation, when the local don conscripts him into la mafia, Peter chooses to flee to America. There, he tries to find his place in a startlingly alien new world, first as a shipyard riveter, then a bootlegger during Prohibition’s early years. But when he loses his heart to a beautiful young American teacher from a wealthy family, their romance will send shockwaves through their respective societies, and ultimately force Peter to redefine who and what he is.

Meet John Donatello, Peter’s middle brother, whose desperate act of violence results in the death of the don’s son and the exile of himself and his brothers. In America, his own struggle will take him first to the trenches of World War I, and then later into a position of power within the rising underworld spawned by the Eighteen Amendment. His violent path of guilt and anger will draw him into inevitable conflict with Peter, the brother he both idolizes and resents.

Meet Angelu, the youngest Donatello. A true innocent, Angelu is forced by circumstance to emigrate with his brothers to a land he finds overwhelming and frightening. Ever a creature of kindness and joy, Angelu will watch as his beloved Peter and John are pulled further away from him by their respective destinies – leaving him alone in a world he can never understand.

At 240,000 words and spanning ten years, The New Americans is a saga of courage and adventure, betrayal and retribution, honor and love. It walks us through a turbulent time in our nation’s history, as these three young men strive to discover what it means to be American.

Based on cassettes my father recorded just before he lost his battle with cancer in 1992, this novel is a unique father-son collaboration separated by almost thirty years. For my own part, I’ve authored nine professionally published novels, including The Franklin Affair, a historical mystery about Ben Franklin, and The Undertakers, a five-book middle-grade horror series that has been optioned for a feature film.

The full manuscript of The New Americans is available for your review with an eye toward representation. 

Thank you for your consideration.

- Ty Drago

That's it! Often the agent will ask for sample pages or even sample chapters as well. But really it's the query that will make or break you.

While this letter's already gone out to those aforementioned agents, that's only the FIRST wave! So if any of you have suggestions to offer, I would certainly welcome them. Query-writing is kind of an art within an art, if you take my meaning, and there's always room for improvement.

In the meantime, keep writing!