It's not every day that a newborn baby is stuffed inside a cardboard box, folded up and left in the gutter. Nick Santinelli steers a huge New York City street sweeper around a corner and sees the box lying just ahead. He gets out and picks it up, both surprised and shocked at what he finds inside. He brings the sleeping baby home and only blocks from his route. "Sandy!" he called out, as soon as he entered the living room. Her hair, still wet from a shower, his girlfriend sat on the couch drying it. "What are you doing home, Hon?" "Oh, nothing important...just a baby I found in the street." She instantly stopped drying her hair, holding the still pose and replaying what she just heard inside her mind, or what she thought she just heard. No, that could not have been what he said. She turned to him with a questioning look. "What did you just say?" Sandy, his longtime girlfriend, decides they should not report anything and raise the baby themselves. She's dying of terminal cancer and wants this one chance to be a mother. After she passes away, Nick finds a Nanny who he believes he can trust. When the nanny steps out to buy cigarettes after leaving the now three year old to take his afternoon nap, Curby walks out of the apartment and becomes lost in the Brooklyn streets. Without a birth certificate, Nick can't prove the boy is his. He battles the court and the assigned city caretakers from Children's Services for custody of Curby where a surprise awaits everyone involved.
About the Author: I was eight months old when my mother, due to extreme poverty, had to put my older brother and I into a Catholic institution immediately after World War II. Three years later we were moved to the first of two foster homes. Those were not the best years of our lives. Discipline was harsh, while nurturing and affection, unfortunately was absent. My brother was ten and I was eight when my father was finally allowed custody and brought us home. At the time, he owned a house in downtown Brooklyn, and fortunately for us, it was filled with family members. That second half of my childhood was totally different from the first. During that first half of my childhood, the void left helped me write this story. Though not as tragic as the alternative outcome could have been for our character, Curby, the wonderful nurturing this little boy receives from his adopting parents in this story is the nurturing I wish I could have had.