Growing up in Jersey City – in a family of crooks – is tough enough. Getting out in one piece is a whole other story.

With deadpan humor and obvious affection, Five-Finger Discount recounts the story of an unforgettable New Jersey family of swindlers, bookies, embezzlers, and mobster-wannabes. In the memoir that reviewer Mary Karr calls “a page-turner,” Helene Stapinski ingeniously weaves the checkered history of her hometown of Jersey City– a place known for its political corruption and industrial blight– with the tales that have swirled around her relatives for decades. Navigating a childhood of toxic waste and tough love, Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale at once heartbreaking and hysterically funny.

[The] unsentimental, unapologetic, and bracingly nonwhining tone isn’t the only thing that sets Five-Finger Discount apart from the typical memoir of familial dysfunction. Ms. Stapinski simply has better material than your average blabbermouth. . . . Most important, Helene Stapinski has Jersey City in all its grimy glory.

- The Wall Street Journal

By turns hilarious and alarming, uproarious and depressing, [Stapinski’s] book reads on the surface like something by Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with a dark undertow of real-life pain and disillusion.

- Michiko Kakutani

The New York Times

Stapinski captures the street-level conviviality of the urban working class while unveiling the mob mentality hedonism, desperation, and violence lurking underneath.

- Village Voice

Buy the book

Now a PBS documentary, this astonishing memoir of growing up in rough-and-tumble Jersey City “will steal your heart” (People)