Richard Leonards Snapshots in Prose

is a collector's album of evocative tales about Jamie Lachlan's coming of age in mid-20th-century New York when the city was the world of neighborhood movie palaces and black-and-white television, old people leaning on windowsills above and children playing on streets below, and teenagers sitting on stoops and car fenders, listening to rock and roll on transistor radios.

Growing up on the East Side of Manhattan, Jamie was a daycare runaway and bullied first-grade brawler, Saturday morning movie cowboy and World War II warrior, Central Park rowboat pirate and traffic-stopping horseback rider.

When Jamie was a teenager, he was a fire-escape gymnast and condemned-building explorer, Holy Ghost slow dancer and Chubby Checker twister, redeemed classroom daydreamer and infamous catechism sinner.

And in 1965, nineteen-year-old Jamie Lachlan went steady with eighteen-year-old Maddy Ferrara and fell in love.