THE UNIFORM

Guida’s novel chronicles one man’s journey from failure to redemption as a cop in mid-20th-century New York.

When readers meet Alfie Baliato, the central character of this poignant, powerful novel, it’s 1968. He and his fellow New York City police officers are charged with ending the student antiwar protests at Columbia University—a task that many cops see as an opportunity to inflict pain on those they see as pot-smoking, overprivileged hippie college kids. Mixed with the white cops’ anger is intense racism and a lurking fear of the well-armed Black Panthers, who are part of the protests. As Alfie watches his colleagues use brute force against unarmed college students, he has second thoughts about the life he’s chosen; when he’s badly injured in the line of duty, his life is suddenly altered. In the pages that follow, readers effectively come to understand that the sources of Alfie’s doubts result from a life marred by traumatic experiences, shattered dreams, and disastrous choices. As a child in upstate Rome, New York, he witnessed terrible racial violence in which his father and a Black minister friend were horrifically beaten. Later, the Baliatos move closer to their extended family in an Italian American section of Brooklyn, and Alfie’s love for his first cousin Adeline, his unfulfilled dreams of a music career, and his indifferent marriage drive him toward a cynical, resigned view of life: “It had taken Alfie a long time to see what his father had always seemed to know and accept. Nobody was free.” However, the most powerful aspect of this novel is the author’s insistence that no one’s life is beyond redemption and that change is always possible, even if dreams never fully translate into reality. Set mostly in Brooklyn during the 1950s and ’60s, the book vividly renders the daily life and values of a particular urban community, and the characters feel real throughout. Readers will gladly travel with Alfie through the sometimes-devastating but always interesting moments of his life.

A powerful story of personal failure and reinvention.