Mulberry Street Follies is about a postgraduate student who takes a part-time job in a restaurant on Mulberry Street that is operated as a front for the New York Mafia. He stumbles across a cache of illegal drugs owned by Big Al Brasso, the head of a mob family, and makes a small fortune dealing on the street before being discovered. It is a literary comedy tilled with a range of colorful, streetwise New York characters that include all sorts of ethnic groups, artists, actors, and petty mobsters.