Giovanni's Dream

Based on the lives of actual people, Giovanni's Dream is the story of an improbable relationship between a young black Jersey woman and a mobbed up wise guy; think Naomi Campbell marrying into the Sopranos. Neesha Steele is so bedeviled by the murder of her baby sister in a drive-by shooting in Newark, New Jersey, that she retires suddenly from a budding career as a singer to become a vigilante in her hometown. She's obsessed with ridding Newark of the criminal who's responsible, also one of the city's most notorious drug lords. Her revenge is inadvertently assisted by Giovanni Sortino, an assassin from Philadelphia who's contracted to take out that same drug dealer by an opposing mob faction. Neesha and Giovanni meet suddenly, and ironically, in a tenement building as they stalk the pusher. And after executing him, they rescue a baby from a trash can, where a crack-crazed mother had dumped the child. For reasons they know deeply, but cannot voice, Neesha and Giovanni each claim sole possession of the child. Their raucous, unpublicized, and illegal custody battle somehow evolves into the unlikeliest of romances - the African-American princess and the Italian-American thug - a romance that may be hopelessly doomed by inner demons and the far-reaching tentacles of the mob. Told in a dark, gritty, heartbreakingly ironic voice, Giovanni's Dream is both a surprising, suspenseful urban adventure and yet another dark societal portrait rendered by author and artist, Brian Dominic.