Andrea Giovino: 'Divorced from the Mob'

Andrea Giovino got some unusual advice from her mother when she was growing up: marry a mobster and your future will be secure. The Brooklyn native took her mom up on the suggestion, marrying a string of mobsters and thugs.

"That's... the neighborhood we came from," says Giovino, who chronicled her experience in a book called Divorced from the Mob. "That's the guys that were making the money."

"I believe I was attracted to those types of men because, at that time in my life, I felt very insecure and threatened or intimidated by someone with an education," Giovino tells Steve Inskeep in the latest of Morning Edition's conversations about the American underworld.

But Giovino says she has a different message for her own daughter: "Go to school, have an education, be independent and don't get a husband until you're late in your 30s."

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