Overview

In the winter of 1984, Sharon Nicorvo was violently raped while delivering pizza to Fort Monmouth Army Base in New Jersey. At the same time, her seven-year-old son Jay was being subjected to repeated and secret sexual abuse by his babysitter. Best Copy Available delves into these devastating events and their long aftermath. Thirty years later, Nicorvo receives a photocopy of the criminal investigation report documenting that brutal night. This report offers a primer to better understand certain assumptions about class and race; sex and violence; crime and punishment; low and high culture; sanity, madness, and masculinity; and the facsimile nature of the truth. As various American men―some real, some imagined, all prone to violence―move in and then out of their hardscrabble lives, mother and son spend decades avoiding and ultimately confronting what happened to them in that formative year. Most ambitiously, Best Copy Available lends voice to an alternative version of American boyhood, manhood, and fatherhood. One where the sons of deadbeat dads can grow up to be stay-at-home dads, and where our boys and men may realize that the most courageous show of strength is not the determined use of force. It's knowing when and how to ask for help.

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Jay Baron Nicorvo is the author of the novel The Standard Grand and a poetry collection, Deadbeat. His nonfiction has twice been named ""notable"" in Best American Essays. Nicorvo's writing has been featured on NPR and PBS NewsHour. A proud community college graduate, he's taught at Eckerd, Cornell, and Emerson colleges. He lives with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, a couple of cats, a dog, and a dozen chickens on a defunct farm outside of Battle Creek, Michigan. Paul Bellantoni, a classically trained actor, is a former opera singer in the US and Europe. He voiced all the fight efforts for Wenwu in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and made his animated feature debut in the Annie Award-nominated Ruben Brandt, Collector. Thrilled to be narrating audiobooks, he excels in character voices, accents, and captivating passionate storytelling. He was the singing voice for the Cowardly Lion of Oz ornament from Hallmark, and is the voice for Uatu, The Watcher in the Marvel Super War videogame. He has voiced lead characters in the English versions of several Netflix and Hulu series, and has appeared in many videogame franchises, including Dungeons & Dragons, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Black Desert, Genshin Impact, and Shenmue. He sang lead roles in opera companies throughout the US and Europe for over a decade, appears on the cast recording of ""The Ballad of Baby Doe"" with Central City Opera, as well as a solo CD of arias ""Heroes & Villains"" with the Moravian Symphony. He made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall as a winner of the Koussevitzky Prize.

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