Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

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Even before you open the book, the stark red, white and black cover sparks the strains of Nino Rota's "The Godfather Waltz" begin playing in your mind. Mark Winegardner has been granted to task of writing a sequel to Mario Puzo's essential 1969 novel The Godfather, a novel which not only must pick up the story of that book, but must also fit the characters and situations Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, and others traced through three epic films. The result in The Godfather Returns.
Perhaps most of Winegardner's readers will be more familiar with the films than with the novel, which followed several different characters, many of whom, such as Johnny Fontane or Lucy Mancini, are only peripheral to the films. Winegardner returns to Puzo's novel to follow several different characters. Taking a technique for the second film, however, he also moves through time to present Michael Corleone's story before the first film, between the first two films, and between the second and third films.
Winegardner's decisions to fill in the blanks between the films is one of the weaknesses of The Godfather Returns. The films left out much of the empire building Michael had to do between them in his attempt to go legitimate. While Winegardner manages to add interesting layers of intrigue to Michaels' quest, and to the characters who surround him, the novel really works best when the characters are engaging in mafioso wheeling and dealing.
One of the strengths of Puzo's work was the characters he made come to life, and Winegardner does an excellent job not only with the lives of Puzo's characters, but with his own. Just as Puzo eventually picked up the story of Santino's son, Vincent, in "The Godfather, Part III," Winegardner also elects to follow Santino's offspring, in this case his twin daughters, as they take their first steps at breaking from the family business. Fredo, a pivotal character in the first two films, is actually fleshed out in The Godfather Returns, in which Winegardner adds to the appetites he exhibits in the first films and gives a deeper look into his need to become his own man and gain his older brother's approval.
The central character to the novel, however, is Nick Geraci, a member of the Corleone family who, Winegardner reveals, becomes the button man who killed Sal Tessio, his mentor. After proving his loyalty to the Corleones, it is clear that Geraci will eventually turn on the family as he tries to strike out on his own, setting up an eventual confrontation with Michael. Although it is clear Michael will be victorious, the cost of his victory helps build tension.
In many ways, Winegardner manages to recapture the style and spirit of Puzo's original novel. Nevertheless, there is the feeling that something is missing from The Godfather Returns. Winegardner successfully captures every individual aspect of Puzo's work, whether in the original novel or the films, but there is a magic beneath it that is missing. Despite missing the Puzo magic, The Godfather Returns is a welcome reintroduction to the Corleone clan.
Steven H Silver

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The stewardess turned and faced the passengers. “May I have your attention?” she said in perfect English. “Would Mr. and Mrs. Michael Corleone please identify yourselves?”

She had less of an accent than most of Michael’s employees. She’d even Americanized the pronunciation of Corleone.

Neri stood and walked toward the front of the plane. The stewardess asked if he was Mr. Corleone, and Neri didn’t say anything.

Only after he passed Michael and Kay did Michael raise his hand. Kay followed suit.

Kay kept her lips still. “Surprise,” she muttered.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Michael said. “Just logistics.”

Neri started speaking with the stewardess in Italian-something about protection and about how Michael Corleone was an important man in America and something about rudeness and hospitality, all in hushed enough voices that Kay still couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then Neri turned toward Michael and Kay and made a patting gesture -there, there. Michael nodded. The stewardess asked that Mr. and Mrs. Corleone remain seated until the other passengers disembarked. Neri took an empty seat toward the front of the plane and stayed there.

“What’s going on?” Kay whispered.

“It’s going to be fine,” Michael said.

“That wasn’t what I asked you.”

When everyone else had left the plane, the two carabinieri came on board. Neri intercepted them. They had a quick whispered conversation, then proceeded down the aisle and stood next to Michael and Kay.

In Italian, Michael welcomed them. One of the men seemed to know him. Michael gestured for them to have a seat. They remained standing. They explained that reliable sources had indicated that the welcoming party in Mondello was not certainly but quite possibly a trap, that it would be inadvisable for him and his wife to set foot on Sicilian soil at this time.

“ ‘Reliable sources’?” Michael repeated, in Italian.

The men’s faces were implacable. “Yes,” the one who seemed to know him said in English.

Michael glanced at Neri, who mouthed the word Chicago . What could he possibly have meant by that? Maybe he’d mouthed something else, someone’s name.

Michael got up and nodded toward the front of the plane. The carabinieri followed him, and they resumed their discussion there, in whispers, out of her earshot. Kay didn’t know whether to be terrified or furious. Outside, the waving people milled around, gesturing toward the airplane in various demonstrative ways. Several got into their cars and drove away. Kay pulled down her window shade. Finally, Michael clapped the two carabinieri on their backs. “ Bene, ” he said, no longer whispering. “A che ora è il prossimo volo per Roma?”

The carabinieri who’d seemed to know him beamed. “We are pleasurable to report,” said one, again in English, “that you are upon it.” And with that, the men left.

Not only were Michael and Kay and Neri already on the next flight to Rome, it turned out to be a private flight, too. The stewardesses claimed it had been supposed to happen anyway, though they struggled to explain why.

“Deadhead,” Michael said. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

“I beg your pardon?” said the stewardess with the perfect English.

Nell ’inglese la parole è deadhead.”

“Deadhead,” she said. “Why, thank you.” She seemed offended that he’d resorted to Italian. She and the other stewardesses cleaned the cabin and left.

“This is so like you,” Kay said to Michael. “You never wanted to go to Sicily, and now you’re getting your way.”

“Kay,” he said, “you can’t be serious.”

“Think of your mother,” she said, thinking of the trunk full of gifts sitting somewhere in the airplane. Preparing it had been her reason to live for months, the reason-everyone agreed, even the doctors-that she’d recovered so well from her brush with death.

“I’ll have it unloaded,” he said. “I know people who can get it all to the right people.”

“Of course you do.”

“Kay.”

“I feel awful, flying all the way here and leaving the kids. For what? For nothing.”

Michael didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He’d wanted to go someplace and take the kids. That kind of vacation would have been a vacation for him. The hardest thing he’d have had to do was sit still to be buried in the sand. Kay’d have spent her time tending to Anthony and Mary, which she loved doing but was not a vacation. For two years she’d selflessly done what Michael needed her to do. She’d had to raise the kids almost as if she were a widow (including holding them though hours of inconsolable crying the year he’d been so caught up in whatever he was trying to do in Cuba that he never even came home for Christmas). She still hadn’t gone back to teaching and was starting to fear she never would. On her own, she’d coordinated the move to Las Vegas. Then she’d taken on the even bigger job of designing and overseeing the construction of the whole complex in Lake Tahoe: their house, a bandstand for entertaining, and preliminary architecturally harmonious plans for houses for the Hagens, for Connie and Ed Federici, for Fredo and Deanna Dunn, for Al Neri, even a little bungalow for guests. Kay had been surprised by how much she’d enjoyed building a house, actually: the countless details and decisions, the chance to undertake the ultimate shopping spree, all for the greater good of her whole family. Still, it was work. She’d asked almost nothing from Michael except to go where she’d wanted to go on vacation, just the two of them.

“What are we going to do now,” Kay said, “turn around and go home?”

“We don’t have to go home. This kind of thing, if you’ll recall, was a part of why I didn’t want to go with you to Sicily.”

“For God’s sake, Michael. This is a murder threat we’re running away from.”

“We’re not running.”

“Right. We’re flying.”

“That’s not what I mean. And it’s not so much a threat as a precaution. Look, Kay, if there’s one thing I’ve been completely… what’s the word I’m looking for? Steadfast. Right. If there’s one thing I’ve been steadfast about, it’s been protecting my family.”

Kay looked away and didn’t say anything. He was steadfast about everything, actually. His good traits and his bad. It was the best and the worst thing about him.

“Those men,” he said, “the carabinieri? One of them is Calogero Tommasino, the son of an old friend of my father’s. I’ve had dealings with his father and with him, too. I trust him. We’re certainly in no danger now and probably wouldn’t have been at all. Again, just a precaution. Please understand. And you at any rate would never have been in any danger, obviously. It’s the code not to-” He stopped himself.

“Harm the wives or children,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Which no doubt goes double in Sicily, which I can’t of course hope to understand, can I, because I’m not Sicilian?”

Michael didn’t answer her. He looked like hell. Maybe it was just the flight. She couldn’t admit it now, but if she’d really understood the ordeal involved in flying from Las Vegas to Palermo, she’d have probably gone along with going to Hawaii or Acapulco.

The pilots got back on board. Neri went up to the cabin to talk to them. Moments later he took a seat, far away from Kay and Michael. The cars and people were gone from the tarmac. The plane took off.

“You actually wouldn’t understand,” Michael finally said. “How could you?”

“Oh, Christ,” Kay said. She got up and sat far away from Michael. Twice in a matter of moments he’d provoked her to use the Lord’s name in vain.

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