Paradise Salvage is both a taut thriller and a lyrical coming-of-age story following twelve-year-old Nunzio Paradiso's last summer of innocence.

For Nunzio, each new wreck towed into Paradise Salvage is a desultory gift from Fortune, a random opportunity for discovery. But on a hot summer day in 1979, in the trunk of an abandoned Pontiac Bonneville, he uncovers a secret that will change his life. Then, in the blink of an eye, all evidence is lost to the crusher, and only his older brother Danny Boy believes Nunzio's story.

Enlisting the help of a cousin, an ex-cop with a dark history of his own, they embark on a bizarre and dangerous journey that proves to be as much one of personal discovery as an unraveling of the mystery behind the corpse at Paradise Salvage.