Welcome to World of Billy Warren Books
Historical fictions set in South Brooklyn
Knowing history allows reflection
on the state of the present.
Polish American Journal Review June/July 2025 Edition
Review by David Trawinski - Historical Fiction Author (Abridged)
This debut novel by Polish American author Billy Warren is refreshingly different and original, while at the same time paying homage to the classic Turgenev novel of 1862. This is a superb work of skillful writing.
The story begins on January 1, 1969. You find yourself reading the journal of Kazimierz Baranski, a 77-year-old immigrant who has long ago settled in the Polish community near 23rd Street in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has taken to writing a journal to find his inner voice. The character development of this work is masterful, and the reader quickly finds himself immersed in a choppy sea of personalities.
Warren tells Kaz’s life story through the inner narrative, a truthful and poignant recollection of the day’s events, often including rich and well-written dialogue between the characters. The journal format is not new, (dating back at least to 1897’s “Dracula” by Bram Stoker), but is highly effective for communicating the trapped, isolated feelings of a lonely, aged mute. Kaz reflects on his days in Poland as a youth, and the turbulent relationship with his own father that eventually drove him and his mother to flee to America. When she does not survive the passage, he enters the rough and tumble streets of New York alone. He is guided to Brooklyn by two markers that remain constantly looming over him for the rest of his life, the Statue of Liberty and the spires of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church near 23rd Street.
Kaz’s life is an incredible one, especially in this eventful and often painful year of 1969. He experiences many of the main events of that year, in an almost “Forrest Gump” like storyline. The Baltimore Colts’ Super Bowl upset by the Jets plays a critical role in the story, as does the moon landing, the massive protests against the Vietnam War, the Woodstock Festival, NYC’s Greenwich Village Stonewall Inn riots, and the World Series upset of the Baltimore Orioles by those Amazing Mets. Yet, these are craftily woven into the journal of Kaz by the author’s use of the experiences of secondary characters in many cases, including his grandsons. Kaz reflects as the varied choices of his grandsons, ever so true to life, cause tension between themselves and their own fathers.
“Fathers and Sons and Other Village Idiots” is an inspiring story of a man who has made a robust life for his family in a new world, but along the way, may have lost sight of how every family has its own squabbles and generational differences. What I found most refreshing about this work is the subtle undercurrent of faith that belies it, and in the end, resurfaces when it is most intensely needed.
David Trawinski
Polish American Journal
June 2025
