What Sammy knew A novel

In 1970, following bitter exchanges with their respective parents, 17-year-olds Sam and Kim flee their Long Island homes for Manhattan, where they move into their shady friend Richard's squalid East Village apartment. Sam's only contact with his parents is through the family's live-in maid, Tutu, who is Black. Sam, dearly loving Tutu, is determined to save her from his parents' heartless plan to force her into retirement. Kim, a revolutionary wannabe, is equally determined, but in her case it's to become involved with the Black Power movement; she sees a chance when she improbably masterminds the potential sale of an illegal stash of Uzis to the Black Panthers. Tutu's grandson, Leon, a wonderful singer who dreams of securing a record contract, is innocently involved when he is promised a meeting with a famous record producer. Unfortunately, Laskin's novel requires considerable suspension of disbelief but nevertheless tells an engaging story, while Tutu is a splendidly realized character who alone makes the novel worth reading.

Seventeen-year-old Sam Stein doesn't know very much and is slow to learn in Laskin's lackluster debut novel (after the biography The Family), a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of revolutionaries and rock and roll in 1970s New York City. As a high school senior and aspiring writer, Sam becomes innocently embroiled in radical politics after he meets teenage femme fatale Kimberley Goodman at a New Year's Eve party, leaves his cushy Long Island suburb, and moves into an old friend's drug-saturated East Village apartment. Sam is soon "intoxicated and flattened" by the allure of Manhattan, and is unknowingly lured into a gun-running weapons scheme involving Kim's new friends, the Black Panthers and the Weathermen. It's a reckless endeavor that endangers Sam's parents's Black domestic, Tutu, and Tutu's 21-year-old grandson. Unfortunately, an author's note explaining that Tutu was inspired by a woman who worked in Laskin's house growing up is more touching than the novel itself. The pedestrian plot and straightforward prose style are unlikely to keep readers interested as the commonplace story wends its way to its predictable conclusion. Laskin's nonfiction work makes a greater impact. (Mar.)