\u201cHow do you turn the province of drunks, sailors, and hookers into a dream of bright escape?\u201d she asks in the opening paragraph. \u201cYou build Wonderland, one of America\u2019s first amusement parks, located on the water right outside of Boston. Wonderland only operated for a few bright seasons, from 1906 to 1910, but its legacy shines on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wonderland was first an amusement park, then a ballroom, a greyhound dog racing park, and is now the last train stop on the MBTA Blue Line.<\/p>\n
Treska uses its trajectory as a metaphor for, among other things, the developers who tore Boston apart from the late \u201950s through the \u201970s, destroying immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods, displacing tens of thousands, including many members of Treska\u2019s extended Albanian-Italian family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWonderland\u201d also evokes the fierce, weirdly unique pride of place that characterizes the true lover of Boston. Most of all, it\u2019s a stand-in for the eternal search for home and love, and the way our childhoods template that search, forever.<\/p>\n
She spent her first seven years in and around the Treska home on Hancock Street in the then-working-class neighborhood of Somerville.<\/p>\n
Her father, Phil, was a bookie for the notorious Winter Hill Gang mobsters. Busted at his post office job, he spent two years in federal prison for racketeering. \u201cI never flipped on anyone, Nikki,\u201d he tells her later. \u201cI did good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mother, Christine, is tough, too, taking bets over the phone, but walks out on Phil when he gets a little too free with his fists.<\/p>\n
With her mother, her younger sister, and their stepfather, Treska spends the next decade of her formative years moving around the country: Texas, Virginia, Hawaii.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a family full of runners from a city of runners. We get \u2026 out of there. We moved and set up somewhere safe and make ourselves real until we have to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
But her heart, for better or worse, is always in Boston: back with Phil, the Pats, the North End\u2019s Regina\u2019s Pizza, and the coke-snorting aunties with feathered hair and bomber jackets, \u201call mouth,\u201d who helped raise and form her.<\/p>\n
Flying into Logan, she cries at the sight of the familiar red-and-white tower of the Soldiers\u2019 Home.<\/p>\n
In 2008, she moves to Manhattan, begins teaching English at The City College of New York, and rents out the bedroom of her tiny Harlem apartment on Airbnb, making a decent living for the first time in her life.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s escaped \u2014 kind of \u2014 but she still visits her mother in Florida, the old haunts in Boston. Family memories are selective, distorted to protect the innocent, or conveniently erased. Did Phil sew drugs into the stomach of her beloved stuffed Doggie to sell on the Somerville streets while little Nikki lolled in her stroller? Maybe, depending on who\u2019s telling the story \u2014 including Phil \u2014 maybe not.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/WONDERLAND-1-196x300.jpeg\")
(Simon & Schuster)<\/p>\n
Her father \u2014 in recent years, usually needing money \u2014 is easy to love, easy to hate. How to balance the two? Do you love the person who\u2019s harmed you? Can you ever trust the person who\u2019s known to lie? Do you become hardened, or do you allow yourself to be vulnerable and open, to yearn and long?<\/p>\n
Aunt Loretta, Phil\u2019s sister, cherished and wounded, was a casualty of the family secrets, violence, and dysfunction. Treska has said that in a way she wrote the book partly in homage, so that Loretta\u2019s life would not be invisible, forgotten.<\/p>\n
The last time she saw her aunt was in late 2008. Nicole, her younger sister Lindsay, and Phil visit Loretta in the Saugus mental home where she lives.<\/p>\n
They drive north from Boston, through a strip of Route 1 lined with landmarks dear to the heart of anyone who grew up in the area (as I did): the Leaning Tower of Pizza, Frank Giuffrida\u2019s Hilltop Steak House, Kowloon Chinese restaurant, the giant orange T. Rex looming over the Route 1 Miniature Golf and Batting Cages.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoute 1\u2019s stops and signage managed to conjure a world bigger than the one we knew \u2014 the Far East, the Wild West, prehistory, Europe. Those holy restaurants off the highway promised us the big lights and far-flung places we might not otherwise see. There is some insistence of Bostonians, across generations, to live a life grand enough for the grandeur they feel. \u2026 My parents thought they were destined for greatness, even though greatness wasn\u2019t readily available to them. I liked to think that this was why they went after life so audaciously. I liked to think I inherited this from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loretta is thrilled to see them. They check out her room, the coat Phil bought her at the Burlington Mall, the rafts of old photos.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the bathroom, her Wet \u2019n\u2019 Wild lipstick was on the sink with a can of Aqua Net and a collection of her medications. Just like at Hancock Street. And what was a life, really, but a collection of cosmetics, old pictures, and little plastic bottles? We carried what we could, and Loretta couldn\u2019t carry much. Each item in her little room was a totem, blessed by its mere existence, its survival.\u201d<\/p>\n
Can we ever truly escape our past? Do we really want to?<\/p>\n
Over crullers and coffee at Dunkin\u2019 Donuts afterwards, Aunt Loretta \u2014 heedless of the other patrons \u2014 belts out a family favorite: Dean Martin\u2019s \u201cNon Dimenticar\u201d: Don\u2019t Forget.<\/p>\n
Nicole Treska hasn\u2019t forgotten anything.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTruly, God is in this place and I did not know it.\u201d \u2014 Genesis 28:16 Boston native Nicole…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-165989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115071399214206119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}