Siblings pen first novel

Growing up in Valley Stream, the brother and sister duo of Thomas DiCarlo and Connie Atkinson were always very close and both graduated from South High School in 1970. For the last seven-plus years, the two siblings have worked on, and since completed, something that few brothers and sisters ever have: their first novel.

The book, called “The Brotherhood of Purity,” was released on Sept. 30 and is the first in a planned three-part series. The story follows the life of an investigative journalist as he searches for a terrorist who carried out an attack on San Francisco that killed his father. The book also delves into the life of the terrorist, who serves as the antagonist.

Atkinson and DiCarlo first started kicking around the idea in 2005, but it all stemmed from Sept. 11, 2001, when DiCarlo, who worked in the building next to the World Trade Center, found himself entrenched in the chaos.

DiCarlo, who had five tickets to an international banking conference in the North Tower on the morning of Sept. 11, decided to go in an hour late because he watched the New York Giants on Monday Night Football the night before. Because of the decision, he and four co-workers weren’t in the tower that morning, but when DiCarlo got off the subway around 9 a.m. he quickly realized the terror around him.

He witnessed horrific events that morning, many of which stayed with him years later. “This trauma was the birth of this book,” he said.

Atkinson said her brother struggled to talk about what had happened. “I was trying to get him to open up to talk about his feelings,” she said. “I was also trying to reach him so that he could process the trauma that he had.”

When the idea for a book came about, the two had many ideas they wanted to explore about terrorism and national security. “We were wondering how in God’s name a man not much out of his childhood could be convinced that blowing himself up with a bunch of other people is actually condoned and rewarded by God,” Atkinson said. “That was the premise.”

DiCarlo, who now lives in Manhasset, owns an IT company and does support for the U.S. Department of Defense, came up with the idea of writing a fiction book from the terrorist’s perspective, but the story soon “took on a life of its own.”