The Godfather Returns

The Godfather Returns (2004), a novel by American author Mark Winegardner, follows Italian-American Mafia “don” Michael Corleone as he takes over his father Vito’s role as capo di tutti capi­—the head of American’s Mafia. Winegardner’s novel is a sequel to Mario Puzo’s bestselling The Godfather (1969) and The Sicilian (1984), famous as the source material for Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies. When Puzo died (having declined to write a sequel in his lifetime), his publisher Random House launched a contest to find an author to write the new Godfather novel. Winegardner was chosen from thousands of entrants.

The Godfather Returns adopts the form and style of Puzo’s novels, and Winegardner interweaves its story with that of Coppola’s The Godfather Part II, whose events take place in the background of Winegardner’s novel. Covering the years 1955 to 1962, The Godfather Returns follows Michael’s quest to achieve legitimacy for his business and includes considerably backstory about Michael’s early life. In 2006, Winegardner published a further sequel, The Godfather’s Revenge.

The novel opens in the immediate aftermath of Don Vito’s death. His son Michael schemes with his close adviser and adoptive brother, Tom Hagen, to take the helm of the family “business.” With Hagen’s advice, Michael shunts aside his brother, Fredo. He organizes a series of efficient assassinations that confirm and consolidate his position as head of the Mafia. One of these assassinations involves sacrificing his soldier Mike Geraci, whom Michael suspects of resenting him. However, by chance, Geraci survives. When he realizes that Michael intended him to die, he develops a lasting grudge.



Michael makes his home in Las Vegas, where he runs both legitimate and illegitimate aspects of the casino trade. He begins dealing with Hyman Roth, another criminal boss involved in the casino trade. Unbeknownst to Michael, Roth is seeking an opportunity to avenge the death of his old friend Moe Greene murdered by Michael.

Michael fiercely loves his wife, Kay, and their two children; his dream is to turn himself from a Mafia kingpin into a legitimate businessman, like “any all-American executive,” so his family can openly enjoy their wealth and status. Winegardner delves into Michael’s backstory to suggest that he has always wanted to shun the darkness of his criminal family: we learn that before World War II, Michael volunteered with the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, planting trees and teaching people to read. The memory of the joy he found in this philanthropy continues to inspire him.

However, from the beginning, Michael’s various plans to achieve legitimacy incorporate as many illegal and legal elements. While his investments in legalized gambling and Vegas real estate are more-or-less completely above board, his scheme to install a personal puppet in the White House is not: still less, his plan to assassinate the president of Cuba, who has refused to legalize gambling in his country. Michael does not see any fundamental difference between illegitimate and legitimate wealth: he “wanted to transform an organization made up of violent peasant-criminals into a corporation that could take its place in the greatest legal gambling scam ever invented—the New York Stock Exchange.”



The novel devotes a subplot to Michael’s wife, Kay, and Tom Hagen’s wife, Theresa. The two women become devotees of experimental painters, like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Michael learns to admire his wife’s cultural knowledge: on a plane trip over the desert, “Kay marveled about the startling beauty of the desert, comparing it to the work of abstract painters Michael knew he should know.” Theresa is appointed to the board of a Las Vegas art museum; at an opening there, she meets Andy Warhol. She reports to Michael that Warhol told the assembled audience, “In the future, America will be Las Vegas. Not be like Vegas. Be Vegas,” and Michael replies, “Some people catch on quick.”

Meanwhile, Nick Geraci—now a senior lieutenant to Michael—has proven himself his boss’s equal in Machiavellian scheming. Unbeknownst to Michael, Geraci is also scheming to bring Michael down. Finally, Geraci sees his opportunity to use Michael’s unintelligent black-sheep brother Fredo to destroy Michael. Geraci tricks Fredo into giving Michael’s enemy Hyman Roth some information that can be used to arrange an assassination. Michael survives the hit, pretending not to know that Roth is responsible. He takes Roth to Cuba and kills him there. When he discovers that his brother, Fredo, betrayed him, he tries to kill him too, but Fredo escapes in the chaos of Castro’s takeover of Cuba.

By the end of the novel, Michael has not only racked up a prodigious body count but undermined his fragile scheme to go legitimate. His wife is horrified by the extent to which Michael has immersed himself in the criminal life and she plots to leave him. The ending of the novel suggests that ultimately Michael loves the power and danger of his criminal life more than he loves his dream of legitimacy.