The US Review of Books commends “Sugar Paper” by Tootsie Barron because it “will quench the curiosity of any reader who ever wondered if female gangsters exist and how they wield power”

Tootsie Barron wrote the book, Sugar Paper. The author was born and raised in North Jersey but currently resides in South Jersey. Before returning “home” to New Jersey, she lived in Arizona and Florida. She is the mother of two children and grandmother of two grandchildren. She’s widowed and lives in a world where quiet and words are the norm.
Her official name is Catarina Gallo-Cipo, but everyone nicknames her Kiki. She becomes her parents’ only child after her infant brother dies. The facts are as follows: her life, as she knows it, is a lie. Her marriage signifies the start of the end of her happy naivety. She marries a self-centered serial cheater whose proudest achievement is holding multi-day high-stakes poker tournaments and having the utilities turned off when he can’t pay the bill.
After years of watching her equally unfaithful father-in-law condone his son’s recklessness, she takes her little son and leaves. Some of the multigenerational shenanigans are explained by the true identities of the two families, but no one dares reveal them. Kiki is the first female bookie in the country to support herself and her son. She understands it’s unlawful, but she doesn’t realize it’s only one structure in a magnificent but illegal empire until much later.
The US Review of Books’ Heather Brooks praised Tootsie Barron’s book, Sugar Paper, saying that it “will quench the curiosity of any reader who ever wondered if female gangsters exist and how they wield power.”
Here’s an excerpt from the US Review of Books that highlights:
“Seldom are mobsters of various stripes so sympathetically portrayed as in this novel. For example, Kiki is no gangster’s moll. Even as she hovers in the background serving sandwiches at her bookie husband’s disastrous poker games, she gleans the subtleties of games of chance. Indeed, she learns more and faster than he ever does, avoiding all his impulsive mistakes and earning, and keeping, as much as he has lost and more besides. Her admiration of his seeming mathematical skill and business savvy is ironic, as she later shows the same acumen she attributes to him. Unlike her parents, Kiki refuses to expose her son to criminality and has her out-of-state relatives raise him, thus displaying a streak of moral rectitude that contrasts satisfyingly with her general flagrant lawlessness.”