Johnny Once is a family saga, chronicling the Rosarios, born and bred in the loud and gaudy Italian American enclave, Bensonhurst. It is a New York City story--peopled by a cross-section of urban ethnics: blacks, Latins, and whites (Italians, Jews, Irish, and WASPS accounted for). It is about racial and electoral politics, how they intersect and how they can rend the city's heart. It is about the effort to reconcile current life and values--in this case, embodied by Manhattan's liberal and sophisticated Upper West Side--with the pull of personal history and roots--Brooklyn's standpat and parochial Bensonhurst. It is about fathers and sons and the legacy, burdens, and code of behavior that get passed on. It is about the decline of the power of the Mafia and loyalty and betrayal among brothers and friends. Johnny Once has sex, violence and rock and roll in it--but in the main, it is two things: a mystery, the resolution of which has grave consequences for our heroes; and a love story between two old friends who seek in their romance a number of things, including refuge from the surrounding turmoil.