Frank Napolitano Interview - Day of Days ~ JeanBookNerd

Photo Content from Frank Napolitano

Frank Napolitano is a native and resident of Greenwich, Connecticut where he lives with his wife and daughter. Since 1982, when he was eighteen years old, he has been a member of a local volunteer fire company, where he has held the rank of lieutenant and captain.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, he was in lower Manhattan on his way to court when the terrorist attacks occurred, and he witnessed the events of that day first-hand. Two weeks later, he deployed with members of his fire company to the World Trade Center to assist in the recovery efforts there. A graduate of Columbia University and Brooklyn Law School, he currently works in New York City and is a docent at the 9 11 Tribute Museum in Manhattan.

His first novel, Day of Days, written over ten years, is about the fire service and how it responded at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It will be published by Toren James Publishing in September 2021.

Greatest thing you learned at school?
Two things:

1. What and how much you learn is up to you. Your teachers are guides. The curriculum can sometimes be stimulating, but how much you learn and what you absorb, use, and act upon, is up to you. Make the most of it.
2. The ability to see the similarities between disparate things or concepts is the result of learning, yields insight, and indicates the development of a keen mind.

Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.
Having friends who read the book come up to me and tell me how moved they were by the story --- and then ask me to sign their copy of my book.

What are some of your current and future projects that you can share with us?
I’m laying out the sequel to tell the story of what happens to the surviving characters of Day of Days. I am also working on a story about a Chinese woman who found herself caught in the middle of significant events of World War II.

Can you tell us when you started DAY OF DAYS, how that came about?
I started it ten years ago. On September 11, 2001, I was in lower Manhattan and witnessed the terrorist attacks firsthand. I am a volunteer firefighter in a fire company in the suburbs of New York City. That night, when I got back to my firehouse, we began to hear stories about guys we knew in the FDNY and what happened to them that morning. Two weeks later, I was at the World Trade Center with my fire company assisting in the recovery efforts after the attacks and I continued to hear stories of incredible bravery and sacrifice by my fellow firefighters. I expected someone would write a story about what I heard and saw and waited ten years expecting someone to do so. But no one did. So, ten years ago, I started the process of writing a novel that tells the story of what it is to be a firefighter, reveals the emotional, psychological, and physical price paid in that line of work, and then take the characters (and the reader) through a minute-by-minute account of what happened that morning at the World Trade Center.

What do you hope for readers to be thinking when they read your novel?
I hope readers think they are learning about what it takes to be a firefighter, what it would feel like to experience what firefighters deal with on a daily basis and, once they have that familiarity, be able to have greater insight into what those firefighters who responded to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center experienced.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?
That once I had a good idea about who they were, they wrote their own actions and statements. I put them through the experiences but once I really got to know them, I knew what they would say and do.

If you could introduce one of your characters to any character from another book, who would it be and why?
I would introduce Sam Damon, the protagonist from Once an Eagle to Captain Patrick Boyle. The two of them would become fast friends. And would have no time for non-entities that surrounded both of them in both books.

Tell me about a favorite event of your childhood.
Fishing with my father in the pre-dawn hours on Long Island Sound.

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their lives?
Learn to play a musical instrument. It takes patience, practice, perseverance and humility. The inner discipline you develop is transferable to many other aspects of life, and the creativity it provides is a great release from the impact of life’s daily toil on the soul. Also, it is a hobby sometimes ridiculed by younger peers that becoming totally cool to others when you are older – which provides perspective on growing up.

Best date you've ever had?
The second one with my wife. Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. It was a weeknight, and the bar was pretty much empty, except for the two of us, the bartender, another couple, and the piano player – who bested me. Having played jazz in college, I enjoyed calling out obscure song requests to the piano player from the American Songbook trying to stump him, but I never did. Four gimlets later, we gave up and just let him play away the evening.

What was the first job you had?
I was a paperboy at age 12.

If you could go back in time to one point in your life, where would you go?
College. The body was young and strong, the mind supple, the heart optimistic, the options endless, and the women were so beautiful.

Most memorable summer?
Between sophomore and junior year in college. I worked three jobs to earn enough money for the upcoming school year and to go to Italy for the first time for a month.

First Heartbreak?
The sultry brunette I spent a lot of time with during high school. She blew me off for a surfer-type dude.

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be?
Leonardo Da Vinci.

TEN REASONS TO READ DAY OF DAYS

1. You will learn about firefighting in New York City.
2. You will finally get a better understanding of what those guys in the funny helmets and funny coats do when you dial 911 and they show up in that big loud truck with the flashing lights.
3. It gives you a minute-by-minute account of what went on in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and what the fire department was trying to accomplish that morning.
4. You’ll understand cool new terms like probie, sucking the nails, Halligan tool, and Brunt man.
5. You will want to take a vacation in Southern Italy.
6. You’ll learn how to survive firehouse hi-jinks and ribbing.
7. It captures the Greenwich Village jazz scene at the turn of the century.
8. It will give you an understanding of why firefighters are passionately in love with their profession and consider it a calling.
9. You will understand what words like “courage,” “sacrifice,” and “duty” mean.
10. You realize you can be disturbed, down to a visceral level, from reading a novel.

MAIN CHARACTERS
Phil Coletti, 28. Warm, athletic FDNY engineman and jazz musician works his shifts on Engine 252 in Brooklyn. He never expected to fall in love with a woman he rescued from a suicide attempt on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, but he’s been on the job long enough to know he should expect the unexpected.

Ellie Deutsch, 22. Raven-haired Midwesterner with green eyes and strikingly beautiful features, other than her deformed hand. She dropped out of FIT and hit a low spot all alone in New York City – until she met Phil Coletti.

Captain Patrick Boyle, 46, the most decorated officer in the history of the FDNY. A legend, life force, and leader to his men, who will follow him anywhere. A Vietnam veteran with a passion for firefighting, but his past haunts him. His story opens with him lying in a hospital bed recovering from third-degree burns when he’s surprised to see his former lover at his bedside, the elegant, wealthy blue-blood socialite Lauren Moore —especially since she ditched him to get engaged to a billionaire running for governor of New York—and he begins to wonder if the Job is truly for him.

Bryan O’Rorke, 30, a hard charging truckie and son of a fireman killed in the line of duty. The tattoo of the Celtic Cross on one arm and the Maltese cross on the other, reminds him of his past and his future. The loss of his father drives him to demand 110% from the guys on his crew. When a probationary firefighter from the Bronx, nineteen-year-old Harry Sturgis, arrives at the firehouse, it doesn’t take long before O’Rorke is putting the kid through the paces, and both men suffer the consequences of his unorthodox methods.

September 11, 2001

For these men, the fire service is their heart, their blood, and their brotherhood. On the morning of September 11, 2001, bound by that brotherhood, they responded to the alarm at the World Trade Center. They fought that day to save civilians, each other, and themselves, against an adversary they thought they knew, and with every step they took, came to realize they might not see another sunrise.

It's the spring of 2001 in New York City. FDNY engineman and jazz musician Phil Coletti works his shifts on Engine 252 in Brooklyn. He never expected to fall in love with a woman he rescued from a suicide attempt on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, but he's been on the job long enough to know he should expect the unexpected. Across the river in Manhattan, Captain Patrick Boyle, the most decorated officer in the history of the FDNY, lies in a hospital bed recovering from third-degree burns. He's surprised to see his former lover at his bedside- especially since she ditched him to get engaged to a billionaire running for governor of NewYork-and he begins to wonder if the Job is truly for him. Over on Ladder 14, Bryan O'Rorke, a hard-charging truckie and son of a fireman killed in the line of duty, demands 110% from the guys on his crew. When a probationary firefighter from the Bronx, nineteen-year-old Harry Sturgis, arrives at the firehouse, it doesn't take long before O'Rorke is putting the kid through the paces, and both men suffer the consequences of his unorthodox methods.

This visceral and unsettling novel tells the story of the firefighter's life, culminating with the emergency response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on a spectacular September Tuesday in 2001. It portrays the courage, pain, and devotion of the men and women who respond when the alarm is sounded, who follow an unwritten code borne of necessity and preservation, and who sometimes pay the ultimate price so others may live.

All proceeds from this publication will go to the 911 Tribute Museum and the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

You can purchase Day of Days at the following Retailers: