Never Tell Our Business to Strangers

Released on February 23, 2010

“With her intrepid reporting and unique voice, Jennifer Mascia breathes life into characters living on the fringe, people that most others ignore or try to forget: the druggies, the dealers, the scammers, the murderers and desperate ex-cons. The fact that they were part of her own loving family makes her story all the more remarkable and impossible to put down.”

—Helene Stapinski, author, “Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History

“With a keen journalist’s eye and a loving daughter’ heart, Jennifer Mascia has written an incredible true story of family secrets, lies, and, ultimately, forgiveness.”

—Janice Erlbaum, author of “Have You Found Her: A Memoir

About the book

When Jennifer Mascia is five years old, the FBI comes for her father. At that moment Jenny realizes that her family isn’t exactly normal. What follows are months of confusion marked by visits with her father through thick glass, talking to him over a telephone attached to the wall. She and her mother crisscross the country, from California to New York to Miami and back again.

When her father finally returns home, months later, his absence is never explained — and Jenny is told that the family has a new last name. It’s only much later that Jenny discovers that theirs was a life spent on the lam, trying to outrun the law.