My Name Is Joe Lavoie

 

The Lavoie family is one of those families.  Lots of kids and every one of them cut out for trouble.  A father who drinks and a mother who has given up and spends her days in a daze.  There are four brothers, Jack, Bernard, Joe and Eugene.  Everyone is afraid of Jack, even his family.  The two girls are gorgeous and available to anyone.  

After Joe finishes his Army stint, he and his brothers look around for work but there isn't any for a Lavoie.  So they decide that robbing stores would do nicely.  Jack decides that they should dress up in suits and natty hats so that those they rob will remember the clothes and not them.  All the brothers participate except for Eugene who is trying to go straight.  The jobs go well and the brothers decide that there is another little job they want to take care of.  A married policeman living down the street has been having an affair with their young teenage sister and they hate him for that.  Jack decides they should kill him.

This novel is told looking back on that decision.  Joe is emerging from decades in jail after the brothers kill a policeman and evade capture for several weeks.  He was wounded in the takedown and has been in a wheelchair since that day.  As he lays in the bedroom of his sister Ronnie he looks back at his life and wonders what might have been if he had been born into a different family.   

W.A. Winter is the pen name of a journalist who also writes novels based on true crimes.  He is from Minnesota and that's where most of his novels are set.  The reader gets a sense that these men's lives would have been much different if they had been born into a different family.  The love the children have for each other extends into their adult years, no matter what each one had done.  I listened to this book and the narrator did a great job, a clear voice that didn't take over from the story.  This book is recommended for true crime readers.