South Brooklyn Exterminating

Jim Fennell and his son, Jonah, are exterminators working New York City in the mid 1980’s, moving from posh literary and sailing clubs in Manhattan to Queens dive bars, racetracks, and airports. When Jim’s partner commits suicide, father and son team spiral down a frightening path of poverty, self-
destruction, and domestic nightmares, which puts their relationship to the test. Throughout their journeys, Jim pushes his son to seek something better in life: stay in school, find his voice and calling, and not do this kind of work for a living. Jim exposes his son to the rougher side of an exterminator’s working-class life: killing rats and mice, trapping squirrels, fumigating planes, eliminating beehives, and drilling for termites. In doing so, Jim allows Jonah to understand the value and dignity of labor, the complications of class politics and identity, and the promise of seeking something more for himself.

Ultimately, South Brooklyn Exterminating is a genuine New York City story of redemption, as a son learns to look past his father’s mistakes and understand his life and work, and a father learns to make amends and mend a relationship in tatters before it is too late. It’s difficult to find literary territory that hasn’t been mined, South Brooklyn Exterminating does just that—taking readers on a journey into a city beneath a city, a trip into the underbelly of working-class New York. The book delivers frightening moments of entrapment and death, brash confrontations with class boundaries and limitations, and heartwarming scenes of compassion, understanding, and acceptance.

Published April 2024
Spuyten Duyvil Publishing