Bill Gordon, author of "Mary After All"

I grew up in Jersey City during the 1970s, a somewhat bizarre, often hyper-insightful world where, amidst the urban blight and screwed-up politics, people were judged not by what they did for a living, or what they did to the rest of the world, or even for their larger "reputations," but rather by how they treated you directly. And so it was not uncommon to hear bluntly, within the same sentence, of a "kind" and "gentle" hit man or a "rotten, selfish" priest.

Mary After All began as a thesis project while I was in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. Originally, I had intended to write a memoir about my own years of growing up gay in a working-class neighborhood in Jersey City -- along the lines of the stories I'd been writing and publishing, but larger. A book that would include the actual history of the town as well as its rich urban lore; stories I'd grown up hearing about Charlie Cuppacoffee (a notorious local hood who my parents had known and often made casual reference to), Tony the Horse (a hit man and good "uncle")... perhaps some of the bookies and loan sharks who made appearances in my own family and its circle of friends ... as well as the long line of crooked, controlling politicians that had been a part of the city's fabric for as far back as anyone could remember... and whom everyone seemed to miss.

During my research, I conducted many interviews, either formally or informally, and invariably it was the voices (my mother, father, aunts, uncles, friends) that interested and outright amused me as much as the material I was gathering. I decided to try writing in that voice -- that collective voice... an amalgamation and creation, if you will -- the way I might if I were writing a monologue. I also turned back the clock, starting with Jersey City before its post-1960s decline... a time I'd heard tales of, but never experienced myself. And out of that voice, came Mary, my narrator, and then the story, the eventual time frame, surrounding characters... Mary After All.

From beginning to end, the writing and publication of Mary After All took eight years. Along the way, I dug up every bit of Jersey City lore, trivia and actual history (city, personal, family) I could -- then tried to see it through Mary's eyes... place it within her story. Or the one that I imagined.

It's been quite a journey. I am in love with the character of Mary. She started with a heap of detail and a voice... then grew into a story and a novel. In its way, Mary After All tells the story of a century of living for one family in Jersey City. By hook or by crook, Charlie, Tony and other colorful characters -- who had already risen (for those I interviewed, for myself maybe) to the level of fictional creations -- did make their way into Mary's saga, as did a few other local hoods, an actual mayor here and there. But of course their lives, actions, and in many cases their names, are now, like Mary After All, a work of fiction.

Still, I would like to think the novel captures much of the history of my hometown and at least the essence of some of the people who inspired my characters. The truth is that Jersey City has no shortage of "characters" waiting to jump off the page. If anything, while writing, I often had to water down reality to make the fiction seem "real."

Bill Gordon is the author of Mary After All.