His debut novel ‘Mickey Sojourn’ takes readers on a wild ride, from Hollywood dreams to bank robberies
A man who once robbed banks was sitting outside a South Side tavern last week. “I was sentenced to 60 months and wound up doing four and a half years and change,” said Josh Lettiere. “That was a decade ago and only now I am finally starting to see a better future.”
We were at Cork & Kerry at the Park where, a couple of months ago, people gathered to celebrate the publication of Lettiere’s first novel, a wild ride titled “Mickey Sojourn.” The main character, Mickey Fortunato, bears a very strong resemblance in deeds, style and vocabulary to Lettiere.
“It’s a work of fiction but there is a lot of myself in there, a younger me,” he says.
Lettiere is 47 years old and is employed as a member of Ironworkers Local 1. He is a product of the city’s neighborhoods, and has friends spread across the area. He tells me he went to more than a dozen grammar schools, three high schools (playing football at Mount Carmel) and five colleges, eventually graduating from Western Illinois University with a degree in communications.
One of five children, he does not see his older sister or three younger brothers very often and hasn’t seen his mother in more than 30 years. But when he talks of his father, his eyes fill with tears.
Frank Lettiere died in 2019. “He was my best friend,” says his son. “Whatever writing talent I might have I owe to him. We always had newspapers around the house, and books. He preached a thirst for knowledge and often said, ‘I’ve spent more money on encyclopedias than I have on cars,’ and he loved cars.”
In his father’s obituary, one can read about how the man rode a horse from Palos Park to Wyoming; was married five times to three women; traveled to Mexico, Scotland, New Zealand and Peru; held all manner of jobs; and was, as one friend said, “A lover of life, horses and beer.”
“I think that he would be proud of me, of this book,” Josh Lettiere says.
The novel begins with Mickey headed to Los Angeles. “The downtown skyline disappeared behind me. I passed old factories and trees rising above the industrial wasteland. By the time I hit the Tri-State overpass the city where I was born and raised was a distant memory.”
Mickey is going west to produce a screenplay he has written titled “79th Street,” based on a story he wrote in high school. But an older woman, a family friend, who had promised to finance the film, has pulled out of the deal, saying, “It was pie in the sky anyways.”
Still, he’s off to LA where people are waiting to start filming. He’s got a girlfriend with a serious drug problem. He starts robbing banks and that goes well for a while, as does a jaunt to Vegas with a girl he’s just met. He wins, she steals … but sorry, no further spoilers.
The novel reflects Lettiere’s real life: his trips to Hollywood in the 1990s and later, to naively shop a screenplay titled “All the Young Dudes,” disappointments and eventually robbing banks to survive, getting caught and winding up in prison, his sentence short because he never used violence or weapons.
The book on its best pages reads like a collaboration between Hunter S. Thompson and Elmore Leonard. There’s tough language, sharp observations and Mickey wildly popping pills, washing them down with a steady stream of Miller Lites, which is Lettiere’s beer of choice.
The author does not do drugs and says he only has when taking painkillers to deal with sixteen surgeries and 40 broken bones, including both legs simultaneously.
Returning to Chicago after his 2014 release from federal prison in Elkton, Ohio, he got married, returned to ironwork and put his literary and movie dreams on hold.
And then he met Craig Gore. A Columbia College graduate, Gore was in the midst of a successful writing career that had him in Chicago as a writer/producer of the NBC series “Chicago P.D.” As part of his research, he was spending time with police officers, cruising the city, hearing their stories.
One of those cops asked his old friend Lettiere to join them one night and he bonded with Gore, who encouraged him to continue writing. “I liked him right away, there being a certain romance attached to men who rob banks that separates them from drug dealers, gangbanger shooters and most other common criminals,” says Gore, who himself had youthful troubles with the law. “I told him that night to forget about screenwriting or Hollywood. What he needed to do was write his life story as a novel.”
Before that could happen, Lettiere and a friend took a vacation to Italy. There he met a girl and “it was like I was struck by lightning,” he says.
Divorced from his first wife, he began a courtship using Google translate, writing long letters. He decided to move to Italy and marry the girl, whose names is Andreina.
Understandably, “Everyone thought I was crazy,” he says.
He rented an apartment on the Amalfi coast, set up a writing desk on the roof of his building and got a student visa when he enrolled in Italian language classes. He began to write and the words poured out.
“I had never expected to hear from him again,” says Gore. “But what he showed me was raw, brutal, darkly funny, beautiful and very real. He’s tough, gracious, kind, street-smart, book-smart, funny as hell, talented, and best of all — no matter what life throws at him and all he’s been through he is still a romantic. A man who believes in love and honor and keeping his word.”
Lettiere started bouncing from Italy to Chicago, where he did ironwork and saved money, and to LA, to show his writing to Gore.
Gore introduced him to Albin Sikora, who partnered with his older brother Joseph Sikora in a TV and film production company named Black Fox. Through Albin, Lettiere met Joseph, another Columbia College graduate and a successful actor who was in Chicago starring in the first season of the Starz series “Power” spinoff “Power Book IV: Force.”
“Albin is such a good judge of character that I knew I would like Josh,” says Joseph Sikora. “I sure did and got him a role in one of our episodes. I find him authentic, a true and unique urban voice, the kind we don’t find much anymore.”
By the time Lettiere and Andreina had married, the Sikora brothers had started a publishing company, Sacramentum Press, with another Columbia College graduate, graphic novelist Alverne Ball. They decided to publish Lettiere’s book after it had gone through some rewrites by Gore and editing by Albin Sikora.
“They took a lot out but they did a great job with it,” says Lettiere. “I’m grateful and I am so lucky to have found these guys.”
There was a jam-packed book party at Book Soup in Los Angeles and at the party at Cork and Kerry at the Park, Andreina made “a ton of food for the crowd,” which bought more than 200 books.
But Andreina is now back in Italy since her visa expired and Lettiere misses her to the point of tears. The Sikora brothers are looking forward to “Power Book IV: Force” Season 2, which begins Sept. 1. They and Gore are hopeful Lettiere’s novel might wind up on a screen. Or that Lettiere himself will, since they have helped get him an agent to seek out TV or film roles.
When Lettiere dreams, he dreams of Italy, “of having a family, Andreina and me raising kids on the Amalfi coast and me making a living as a writer.” However, reality comes the next day. “Morning,” he says, “at a sausage plant in Mundelein where it’s 120 degrees on that roof.”
As he talks, he fidgets with the chain around his neck. From it hang a pair of wedding rings and, if you look closely enough, a tiny set of handcuffs.
