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Miss Laura: A busy sales executive, the protagonist of the story. She is a strong, hardworking and has the desire to change the life of a young boy. She represents a singular intellect to the homogeneity of the masses in Manhattan, NY. Laura will meet Maurice which will change her perception of everything and change her life for the better.

Maurice: A young boy whom will bump into Laura and start an everlasting friendship. Maurice displays the true hardships he has gone through being surrounded by drugs and horrible influences such as uncles, father and his mother. Maurice is a developed character, who has proved himself to be astonishing by overcoming what he has and ending up stronger than ever at the end.

Nunziato: Laura’s father was a hardcore alcoholic. He was ruthless and abusive towards his son and wife; unfortunately due to his addiction his children were terrified of him when he was drunk. But later on after Marie had died, he died from smoking and by himself in the hospital. 

Annette: Laura’s oldest sister. Annette was the smart and thoughtful and mature one among the siblings. She is very sincere and generous towards Maurice, making him feel as comfortable as possible. She was one of the few family members that was there for Laura.

Maire: She is the mother of Laura; she was a vigorous and spirited person for her children when her husband was abusive and violent. She was in a way the rope who made sure things wouldn’t go too far when Nunziato was drunk. Later she died from exhaustion, but she got the chance to say goodbye to her whole family.

Frankie: He is Laura’s older brother, he is humble and hesitant, he’s become very unhealthy (obese) and anti-social because of the way he was treated by his father, after his father died he passed away as well from obesity and a bad diet.

Darcella: Is a on and of drug addict, who is Maurice’s mom. She has had it tough raising all three of her kids alone and having no money, with only drugs to lean onto when life gets too tough for her or to make money. She was significant to Maurice even with what she did, later on she dies.

Rose: Rosetry’s to shield Maurice from drugs and be a positive influence even though she really wasn’t. She is Maurice’s only grandmother.

Morris: The father of Maurice, he abandoned Maurice’s family after his wife stabbed him. He was highly respected on the streets of NY for his ruthlessness. He later came back when Maurice turned 16, as a very unhealthy man, he later died of AIDS in a small apartment building by a bed

Full Title: an Invisible Thread the True story of an 11 Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny

Author: Laura Schroff & Alex Tresniowski

Type of Work: Novel

Language: English

Time & place written: The United States, 2011

Date of first publication: USA edition, 2012

Publisher: Howard Books

Narrator: Miss Laura reflects her childhood story to Maurice and the years of them knowing each other.

Point of View: Miss. Laura speaks in first person; she describes her perspective of Maurice while explaining their relationship together and her childhood. She occasionally remarks on what other characters are thinking.

Tone: Miss. Laura explains her situations a straightforward as possible.

Tense: Past tense (flashbacks) & present towards the end of the novel

Setting: Takes place in Manhattan, NY; the up state and the poorer side.

Protagonist: Ms. Laura & Maurice

Major conflict: Laura is trying to help lift Maurice and be a good role model for him to learn from. Also this includes Laura’s personal life.

Rising action: Laura finds Maurice and their journey begins together as they meet up everyMonday.

Climax: When Maurice and Laura relation are being put to the test with both their personal lives changing.

Falling Action: This is focused on their personal lives; for Maurice it’s about his new family and business where as for Laura her story focusses on her marriage.

Theme: True friendship, even though put to the test, never dies

Motifs: perseverance, accomplishment and dedication

Symbols: the cookies and paper bags

Foreshadowing: When the teacher in Maurice’s childhood tells Miss Laura that she can’t just leave one day.

Laura takes Maurice to her elder Sister Annette’s house so that he can experience playing outside like a normal kid. She then allows him to spend Thanksgiving with her family, and they all have a great time. Then there is a flashback to when her father tried to drive Laura’s family home while he was intoxicated, and he nearly killed them.

  Marie, Laura’s mother, gives birth to her fifth child named Steven. When she is able to work again, she gets extremely busy. One day she overslept and caused the kids to miss their dentist appointment. Laura’s father Nunziato gets angry because he has been drinking. Marie takes the kids to her mother’s house fearing that they won’t be safe in their home. They return home and for a while things get better. After a few years Nunziato returned to his old drinking habits. Laura decides to stand up to her father during one of his rages. She believes that she grew up at that moment.

  Maurice celebrates Christmas with Laura and her sister Annette’s family. Then we learn about her first marriage. She does not reveal her ex-husband’s name, and calls him Kevin. Laura’s relationship with Kevin started out decent but ended poorly. While only about two years into their marriage, Kevin calls to tell her that he wants to get divorced. Laura later discovers that Kevin had an affair, and she mourned her lost relationship for years.

Summary:Chapter l

Their first meeting was on September 1, 1986, 56th street in NYC. Laura never really understood why she went back to Maurice and took him to McDonalds, the only thing she did know was that it felt good and from that day on they met every Monday for the next 150 Mondays. Looking back at this event I would call this a sudden connection but to Laura she named it an Invisible Thread, which is an old Chinese proverb: something that connects two people who are destined to meet, regardless of place and time and circumstances. From that day forth it changed both their life’s. 

 Summary: Chapter ll

Maurice and Laura introduce themselves to each other, and realize they live only two blocks away. Laura talks about herself at one of their lunches, we find out that she works at USA today and her job is sale calls, meetings, working lunches and presentations etc. Maurice was astonished knowing that she completed all this labor every day. Maurice keeps a weapon with him to protect himself from the violence which surrounds him. Morris father of Maurice is introduced; he lived in Brownsville, birthplace of the nefarious 1940’s gang Murder Inc, but Morris was one of the most feared men from the groups of gangs. He was tough enough to rob his friends and they would do nothing about it, until one day he met his competitor Darcella. She was the daughter of Rose, a single mother from Baltimore. Though Morris and Darcella were time ticking bombs they ended up as a match. They had nicknames for each other June bug and Red bone. Together they had two daughters Celeste and La Toya and then a son Maurice. Unfortunately his parents were heavy drug addicts and used violent language around their kids. Later on Laura took Maurice to the park and they had a conversation about what Maurice wanted to do when he was an adult. Later that day they got Hagen Dazs ice cream and went to the Arcade.

 Summary: Chapter lll

The next day Laura told all her friends at work about Maurice, everyone was intrigued. When Laura got home she cut her finger with a knife and rushed to the hospital. David her hope to be boss found out what happened and gave her the dream she always wanted working for USA today. Laura was living a wonderful life since she had her Albert Nippon dresses and she owned many fabulous canvases paying hundreds, she was living the life. Then after a few days of waiting for Maurice to call her, she decided to find Maurice herself. 

 Summary: Chapter lV

That Thursday they saw each other at 7:30PM and went to McDonalds again. He explained he lived with his grandma and mom and sisters, his dad had left them. Grandma Rose grew up in poverty and didn’t take anything from nobody. The Betsy was the knife that rose carried around. Maurice told Laura about some of his uncles like Uncle old, a homicide. Every Monday he would go play video games. Maurice was almost turned into child welfare but Rose protected him with Betsy. Rose was his only family member that tried making an effort to shield him from the sight of drugs. Before Maurice and Laura parted ways they decided to meet up for dinner at Hard Rock Café next Monday. 

Summary Chapter 5-9

Summary:Chapters V

Maurice met up with Laura for dinner at the Hard Rock Café at 7:05. The waitress was super attentive towards Maurice, he had mashed potatoes with a large steak, and the funny part was when he didn’t know how to use his cutlery. A week passed and they met for dinner again and Maurice ordered eggs for dinner and a glass of orange juice. Later that spring Laura got two tickets to the Mets game, she remembered how much here older brother Frankie loved baseball games. Laura introduces her father Nunzie a bartender and her mom Marie a soft, retreating full time waitress. Her father would work from 6:00PM till morning. A lot of the time small situations would make Nunzie goes crazy and he would lash out at Frankie and sometimes beat him up. During the hours of chaos Annette Laura’s oldest sister would close the blinds to the house so that none of the neighbors would see any of their father’s tempers.

 Summary: Chapter Vl

One Monday Laura decided to cook dinner for Maurice, that’s when Maurice first saw Laura’s apartment. Maurice learned how to set the table for first time, after diner they made cookies together; he ended up bringing some desert home for his mom. Laura packed Maurice a pack of hygienic material before he left. Maurice also had to get this sheet signed by his mom allowing him to go to the Mets game with Laura.

 Summary: Chapter Vll

Lisa a good friend of Laura went to 54^th street and Broadway to find Maurice’s apartment and asking permission to bring Maurice to the baseball game. Rose answered the door and allowed Maurice to go to the game. We found out that a lot of the time his mom, sister and him would move to a new place every so often. Once their mom started on drugs there was no end thought they did make a fortune and were able to buy clothes. Later on their building burned down and they lost all their money. Maurice had now warned Laura never go to his neighborhood again, he said it was to dangerous for a rich white woman like her to go to such a dangerous area.

 Summary: Chapter Vlll

Laura tells us about a couple and how this mom was a poor Italian woman who fell in love but he was forced to join the military. During one of their visits she got pregnant with their seventh child. Because of the children’s conditions a few of the kids were sent to other families to live a proper life, but in the end Marie got all her children back. On February 19^th, 1921 they landed in America. Laura’s knows this story very well because Marie is her great-grandmother. After her mother escaped her father’s treachery she fled and met Nunziato and a few children. They ended up having many pets but they always seemed to die for instance weather, car, eaten by other animal. Laura’s father was an alcoholic. When he was wasted he was a very cruel person but on the contrary when he was sober he was as loving as can be. A lot of the times Nunizo would yell and hit Marie and Frankie.

 Summaries: Chapter lX

Valery one of Laura’s good friends was very uptight about her relationship with Maurice, she told her that the child services might find you. Laura knew she was speaking from the heart but didn’t care. Maurice and Laura no longer had to confirm their Mondays it had become automatic. Laura soon offered to do Maurice’s laundry for him when he came over to her apartment. They both had started new rituals like setting the table, clearing the dishes and throwing the garbage away. Maurice’s favorite ritual was baking cookies and eating them he would normally save some for his family, they also drank milk. Maurice learnt what blow your nose meant and what he was supposed to do. It always hurt Laura when she would find out that Maurice had not eaten anything for two or three days. Laura finds out about Maurice always being late to school and tried to explain the importance of being on time, but she didn’t want to come out to pushy. Laura also explained how she flunked school as well. Later on Laura started to pack Maurice lunch for school so that he wasn’t always hungry, he got his lunch in brown paper bags. The symbolism of the Paper bags was that somebody had loved him, (in Maurice’s words). 

Laura Schroff: “It’s something I call an invisible thread. It is, as the old Chinese proverb tells us, something that connects two people who are destined to meet, regardless of time and place and circumstance. Some legends call it the red string of fate; others, the thread of destiny (Schroff 6).

Laura Schroff: I couldn’t believe he lived just two blocks from my apartment. One street was all that separated our worlds (Schroff 8).

Laura Schroff: Yet I believed then and I believe now that there is something in the universe that brings people who needeach other together. There is something that helps two wildly disparate people somehow forge a bond. Maybe it is precisely the thing that haunts us most that makes us reach out to others we thing can provide some solace (Schroff 16).

Laura Schroff: “David, I’m not looking for a lot of breaks in life. But I am looking for one” (Schroff 23).

Laura Schroff: Grandma Rose took it away from him, and from that day forward she tried her best to keep Maurice away from the scourge of drugs. She saw something in him that moment- something different, something special. Perhaps she saw the same thing I did on that street corner (Schroff 33).

Laura Schroff: I realized the rituals themselves were as important to Maurice as the means. Rituals are what ground us in our lives, what give us a sense of safety and continuity (Schroff 85).

Mrs. House: “Children like Maurice are always disappointed in life. Every day someone else lets them down. I hope you realize you can’t just come in and out of his life. If you are going to be there for him, you have to really be there for him.” (Schroff 96)

Created by: Mikaylee Strohm, Faith Muyoyo, Joshua Himelfarb, and Trisha Madhavan

 In October 2001, Laura celebrates her fiftieth birthday, soon after the attack on the World Trade Centers, giving them all the more reason to celebrate their blessings. Maurice gives Laura a touching toast and everyone is moved. Michael and Laura divorce after one year because of the conflict on having a child. Laura ends up getting a dog, which she feels helped her get over the pain of not having a child. She moves to Florida, but soon becomes restless due to the lack of New York City life, and moves back to Manhattan. After years of believing they met when Maurice was eleven, Laura learns that he was actually twelve. Maurice becomes a contractor and is attempting to open his own business. He has been married to Michelle for eighteen years, and Maurice soon hopes to give her a real wedding. Maurice has 7 kids: Ikeem, Junior, Jalique, Jahleel, Princess, Precious, and Jahmed. Maurice now lives in an apartment in downtown Manhattan. He owns all sorts of luxuries he would have never dreamed of having. He also owns a large dining table where him, his family, including Laura, sit down and have dinner.