It’s August of 1973.  Sonny Bolla, proprietor of the Cosmo Demonic Towing Company of Chelsea, Massachusetts, has been caught having an affair by his wife Marie.  She makes her intentions clear that he “will be drained like a sieve.”  Sonny confers with his lawyer and life long friend, Moe Venti. Together they decide to open up a Blues Club down in Inman Square, Cambridge-  “A good business to hide your money in” Moe liked to say.  

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Nineteen year old Patrick Phelan has just returned home to Cambridge after having quit college, and gone on an adventure of his own volition to Louisiana.  His beloved father, Jim Phelan is unraveling with Parkinson’s Disease.  

 

Patrick lands a job as a cook in Sonny’s Place. There he meets a wild cast of characters in an exciting kitchen environment. His directionless life is given shape, meaning, and purpose as food and The Blues find him.  Patrick heads down this road dealing with matters of the heart as well as the demise of his father.

 

Sonny’s Place at its’ essence is a racial irony.  The white kids are lining up the street to get in and pay homage to the legendary black blues musicians.  A couple of miles away in South Boston the drum of racial hatred is being pounded in the wake of the announcement of the desegregation of the Boston School System.  

 

Played out to the denouement of the Vietnam War, and to the backbeat of Richard Nixon’s Watergate- Sonny’s Place is a slice of restaurant fiction that tells the tale of a community of people that shared the tumult and rumble of those days.