Dramatic, graphic and wrenching...The reader is left to wonder--at the devastation of Carcaterra's youth, at his survival to adulthood, and at the grace that allowed him to craft this piercing memoir.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Lorenza Carcaterra grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New York in the 1950s and '60s in a confusing world of love and fear of his paradoxically violent and affectionate father. Then Lorenzo learned that his father had murdered his first wife. And he wondered how he could love his father again. Did he possess the same murderous fury; would he someday suddenly lash out at those he loved? As his father's physical abuse escalated, Lorenzo sought frantically for a safe place...a place where he could find hope and reconciliation and peace, where his father's terrible shadow no longer lingered. Now, decades later, Lorenzo has finally come to terms with the awful truth about his father. A SAFE PLACE is the brilliant result.