"Sicilians never forget and they never forgive. This is a truth you must always keep in mind."
"It is my greatest wish to be thought of as a godfather, a man whose duty it is to do my friends any service, to help my friends out of any trouble- with advice, with money, with my own strength in men and influence- To everyone at this table, I say your enemies are my enemies, and your friends are my friends."
— Don Vito Corleone
The Family Corleone is a 2012 novel by Ed Falco, based on an unproduced screenplay by Mario Puzo. It is the prequel to the The Godfather novel by Mario Puzo, though it retroactively incorporates elements of each of The Godfather films as well.
In 1933 New York City, during The Great Depression and at the end of Prohibition, a 17-year-old Santino "Sonny" Corleone aspires to join his father's business. Don Corleone isn’t amenable to this, hoping for his children to be able to lead legitimate lives. But tensions in the city are rising, and Sonny and the Corleones won’t be able to stay out of the coming conflict forever.
The Family Corleone provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Kelly O'Rourke and her boyfriend, Luca Brasi, have this in common. While Kelly simply left home to get away from hers, Luca solved his problem by beating his father to death.
- Affectionate Nickname:
- Bobby Corcoran is known by his friends as "Cork.”
- Santino Corleone, of course, is known as "Sonny".
- The Corleones often call a young Tom Hagen by the nickname "Tommy."
- Ascended Extra: Many examples.
- Luca Brasi's backstory and how he came to be associated with the Corleones is expanded upon in more detail.
- Kelly O'Rourke, Luca's girlfriend and the mother of his child, who in the original Puzo novel was simply an unnamed woman who was described as a prostitute.
- Signora Anita Columbo, the woman who a young Vito helps not get thrown out of her apartment in Part II, turns out to be the grandmother of Sonny's future wife, Sandra.
- The Irish gang that wounded Vito in his backstory (explained in the novel) are given names and their own story arc.
- Batman Gambit: Mariposa tries to set himself up as mediator between the Families for a cut of everyone's profits. He expects Vito to object, giving him a pretext for the war against the Corleones he was already planning to launch. Instead Vito is first in line to agree, which means that when the attacks already set in motion happen, he is able to claim that he is the wounded party, giving him the political capital to depose Mariposa and become the primary Don of New York.
- Kelly O'Rourke seduces Tom Hagen in the hopes that Luca Brasi will kill him, sparking a war with the Corleone Family she is confident he will win, thus enabling him to take over their territories and businesses.
- Big Bad: Don Giuseppe "Jumpin' Joe" Mariposa.
- Bittersweet Ending: Sonny is eventually able to get overcome his guilt over killing Cork. By the end of the novel, he is a married man and a respected member of the Family. Sadly, we know where that life will eventually lead him.
- Call-Forward: Mixed with the bookends
of the first film, which began with a wedding and ended with murders. Here, the novel begins with a murder (Mariposa having Jake LaConti killed) and ends with Sonny’s wedding.- Vito is able to deduce that Emilio Barzini planned the parade hit for Mariposa to win the war and get promoted to underboss. It's similar to The Godfather where Vito deduces that Barzini is once again The Man Behind the Man to Tattaglia in the war against the Corleones.
- The Cameo:
- Virgil Sollozzo, the Disc-One Final Boss of the original story, and Paulie Gatto, the traitor who allowed him to almost kill Vito, are guests at Sonny’s wedding.
- The cat that Vito plays with during the first scene of the first film is smuggled by his wife to see the new compound.
- Canon Foreigner: Several, including Cork and Eileen Corcoran (Sonny’s childhood best friend and secret lover, respectively), Rosario LaConti, Tits, and the O'Rourkes.
- Doomed by Canon: Don Mariposa and his lieutenants never come up in the events of The Godfather, making their eventual fate in this novel fairly clear.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Luca Brasi is shown as a ruthless but intelligent boss who is a threat and a competitor to the other families of New York. Following the death of Kelly and the massive amount of drugs he takes afterwards in what is effectively a suicide attempt, he's left a wreck who's only truly effective as The Brute.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Cork accidentally shoots Don Corleone when he is actually aiming for his attacker. This leads to a tragic chain of events that ultimately results in Sonny killing Cork.
- It's Personal: What throws Vito into an understated yet pure and unmistakable rage is the assassination attempt engineered by Mariposa during a parade, which endangered his wife and children, and killed an innocent boy.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Vito does his best to keep a young Michael from learning that the Corleones are a pillar of the New York Mafia (and for that matter, that the Mafia even exists), so that he can grow up clean and become a legitimate member of society. It appears to work in the short term, but it's a foregone conclusion that this state of affairs won't last.
- The Man Behind the Man: As in the original story, Emilio Barzini, here a capo under Giuseppe Mariposa instead of a Don of his own Family. Vito deduces that Barzini planned the parade hit to help Mariposa win the war and get himself promoted to underboss.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Sonny’s gang’s refusal to defend Stevie Dwyer when he’s assaulted by Luca Brasi leads to him betraying Sonny to Vito when the gang is captured by the Corleones for hijacking Mariposa’s alcohol shipments, and later joining the Irish gang in their attempt to assassinate the Corleones.
- Retcon: The war between the Fives Families is changed in many aspects from how it was described in the original novel, and the lead Don against the Corleones is retconned from the historical figure Salvatore Maranzano to an original character, Giuseppe Mariposa.
- Saved by Canon:
- Obviously Vito is not dying after he is shot.
- It is a foregone conclusion that Tom won’t be murdered by Luca Brasi.
- Would Hurt a Child: Luca Brasi kills his newborn son in a drug-fueled mania, and a little boy is an innocent victim of Mariposa’s attempted parade hit.
