The BAGO Boy
YOUNG URBAN PIRATE
A NOVEL NOVEL
BY
JOHN BRADLEY
The curious, smart, resourceful ten-year-old BAGO boy has doubts and many questions about religious dogma at his school. He is punished by nuns and abused by priests for asking unanswerable questions. To escape from their clutches, he becomes an urban pirate, embarks on a Huckleberry Finn river adventure with extraordinarily surprising results.
The BAGO Boy
YOUNG URBAN PIRATE
A NOVEL NOVEL
BY
JOHN BRADLEY
The curious, smart, resourceful ten-year-old BAGO boy has doubts and many questions about religious dogma at his school. He is punished by nuns and abused by priests for asking unanswerable questions. To escape from their clutches, he becomes an urban pirate, embarks on a Huckleberry Finn river adventure with extraordinarily surprising results.
MEET THE CHARACTERS
Joey Ferrari
He was about a year younger than Brad and Em, the same age as Bernie, nine-years-old. Joe was an inch or so shorter than Brad, about the same height as Em, and went to school at another, much larger, Catholic school that was about a mile away from the Horseshoe neighborhood. He lived across the street from Abe’s Market and was one of the first neighborhood boys Brad met. Joe, as some called him, was with Brad on most of the trips taken on Turtle Pond.
Bernie McDonald
Lived two houses down from Joey Ferrari and they were each other’s best friend. Bernie was a science buff, nurtured black widow spiders and snakes in his basement, mostly in glass milk bottles. He went to the same school, about a mile away from the Horseshoe neighborhood. Tall for his age, nine, he towered over all but the local teenagers. He and Joey were inseparable.
John Bradley
His nickname is “Brad,” but his sister, a few other relatives and Em, his friend who was a girl pirate, called him “Johnny.” Born in Philadelphia, he was living in a rural area of the city until the family moved to a more urban neighborhood, which he dubbed the “Horseshoe.” All of Brad’s gang lived there and most other characters in the book. Although Brad knew early on, he was destined to be a pirate, it was his getting his camera that prompted the idea of making a pirate movie. It wasn’t until he got a pirate ship, that he planned to make a movie about a trip to the island he discovered on a tugboat tour.
EM
She disliked having two first names, Mary Margaret, or either of them separately, so she her nickname was “Em.” Em came from an affluent family who lived in the Upper Darby suburb of Philadelphia before moving to the Horseshoe. Her mother was active in many service organizations, donating her time. Her father was the captain of a Navy destroyer, based at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which is why the family moved to a historic home on the fringe of Brad’s Horseshoe neighborhood, so he would be closer to his ship. She was about the same age as Brad, and dazzled him with her self-confidence, smarts, and looks when they first met shortly after Brad moved into the neighborhood. Em proved her worth has a pirate, not a girlfriend.
Katie
She was a rat terrier that my mother got me for my 5th birthday, so she was about 5 years old when she accompanied us on our adventure. Katie was with me whenever conditions permitted, which is to say, when I rode my bike, she couldn’t go, otherwise, including in bed, she did. She was more tan than white, but both colors and weighted around ten or twelve pounds.
" Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good "
John
Bradley
INSPIRING NOVELIST AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
John Bradley, Author, Filmmaker: I am The BAGO Boy and lived this story. All the characters and events in this novel are based on real persons and actual events. Although this is my first novel, I’ve been writing since I began keeping a journal at seven years old...
DETAILED BOOK REVIEW
"The BAGO Boy" by John J. Bradley.
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" The BAGO Boy by John J. Bradley is a semi-fictional story based on events and people from the author’s childhood. BAGO, an acronym coined by the author in his childhood, refers to initially bad situations that turned out to be good. Bradley’s first BAGO moment was when a sequence of bad events in his neighbourhood made him famous amongst his peers and inspired him to be a moviemaker and pirate. Despite the religious indoctrination that the young Bradley received in the religious schools that he attended, he had heretical beliefs that he frequently expressed, much to the chagrin of the Christian school authorities, who sometimes flogged him for that. Bradley’s thirst to find answers to the unknown (including challenging religious questions), his free spirit, passion for moviemaking, and aspirations to be a pirate led him to wondrous discoveries and adventures packed with BAGO moments.
I loved reading about the multiple adventures of children going treasure hunting like real pirates, with custom-made suits and boats, discovering mysterious creatures, and getting the fright of their lives. Every time Brad and his friends went on an adventure, suspense gripped me, not knowing if they would get hurt. The author did not select the most compelling aspects of his past and included many unnecessary discussions that slowed the story. This book contains narrations in informal writing that perhaps reflect the characteristic manner of speaking back then but make reading and understanding difficult in some passages.
I rate this book five stars out of five. This book is well-edited and contains a riveting adventure in the third part of the book, which has a surprisingly happy ending. Many aspects of young Bradley’s life could have been left out of the book because they were not particularly interesting and slowed the story. This aspect did not change my overall appreciation of the book, especially the third part, which made up for the shortcomings of the book. There are many instances of profanity in this book, including non-borderline profanity. The sexual content of this book is limited to a couple of kissing scenes between two characters. The only violent content I recorded is a scene where a character gets severely injured. I recommend this book to readers of all religions."
