Me and Mario

Mario Puzo and Carol Gino—Beyond the Shadows of The Godfather, there was the Light of a Love Story

New York Times bestselling author Carol Gino, offers her intimate memoir about love and creative collaboration with acclaimed writer, Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather. Often funny, sometimes raw and always true, Carol invites us into their private life together, as they traveled from New York to Hollywood, Vegas, Cannes, Venice, Rome—and that one time—to Sicily. She reveals the appetites and excesses in the life of this clever and gracious author, screenwriter and one of America’s great storytellers. Filled with Puzo's tips on “how to tell a great truth,” fellow authors and aspiring writers will love this inside-look into the mind and art of the legendary author and the woman he chose to challenge and love for over twenty years. Includes 17 photos.

★ Mario Puzo; author of The Godfather, the epic novel that inspired three, sweeping, dramatic sagas with Francis Ford Coppola and that wove into the American mythos, the archetype of the most romantic patriarchy of all time.

★ Carol Gino; independent, courageous, revolutionary, Nurse and patient advocate—a one-time 60’s Feminist and a woman with a mission to “stamp death and disease out of the Western Hemisphere.”

Find out what The Godfather author Mario Puzo taught Carol Gino about Love, Power and the Art of Storytelling—and what she taught him about Women, Life, and Death.

From the book:

«You going to write today Mario?” I called across the room to him one Saturday morning after we’d had breakfast.

“I am writing,” he answered.

«I don’t hear anything, and what I see is a man lying on his couch," I said. «I don’t see anything that vaguely resembles writing going on.»

Mario sat up on the couch, his legs crossed, feet resting on the wooden cocktail table in front of him. That table was stacked full of books, at least twenty of them. Mario read voraciously, at least one or two books a day.

He reached over and lit one of his large dark cigars. “I am writing,” he repeated. «It’s not coming bad.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing. “Let me read a few pages so I can see how it sounds.”

«You’ve got to wait until I type them," he said.

«So you admit you haven’t written anything," I said.

He shook his head and said, «You don’t get it. By the time I sit down to type my first draft, my books are already written.»

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“What looks like me lying on the couch resting, reading, playing cards is just me waiting for the characters to show up,” he said. “When they show up, I let them tell their stories. When they finish, I type.”

«For those who love celebrity bios, celebrity memoirs and especially memoirs of love, Carol Gino’s, Me and Mario: Love, Power and Writing with Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, satisfies all three.»