Pittsburgh

Frank Santoro faces a simple but sad reality: His parents, once high-school sweethearts, now don’t speak to each other—even though they work in the same building. Trying to understand, Santoro searches through his memories and builds a portrait of their lives together and apart, past and present. Using markers, pencils, scissors, and tape, drawing in vivid colors and exuberant lines, he brings to life the mundane and the extraordinary: his parents’ wedding; his childhood mishaps; his father’s trauma in Vietnam; the rise and fall of his home city, Pittsburgh; even the exploits of his dog Pretzel.

Santoro, the acclaimed author of Storeyville and Pompeii, has created a masterpiece. Pittsburgh is an extraordinary reimagining of the comics form to depict the processes of memory, and a powerful, searching account of how families take shape and fall apart. View Less