As a longtime journalist and author, Linda Leuzzi has always had an eye for the telling detail, the barely noticeable tidbit that makes a story memorable.
Leuzzi’s latest novel, Car Dogs, published in June by Solstice Publishing, is set in and around Bayport-Blue Point, and Leuzzi sprinkles in a host of landmarks South Shore readers will delight in.
For starters, there’s the Bayport Aerodrome, the Bayport-Blue Point Public Library, and Meadow Croft—the estate that served as the summer home of Teddy Roosevelt’s first cousin, John Ellis Roosevelt.
The streets in and around Bayport also feature prominently.
As the story opens, 17-year-old Amanda Caminetti has just absentmindedly blown up the family’s microwave oven for the third time. To get her to focus, Amanda’s parents tell her she needs to start driving the family’s dogs, Bridget and Lucky, around town five times a week and write down what she notices along the way.
We won’t give away the plot here, but what at first seems like a chore brings Amanda into contact with Bernice, an Irish immigrant who served as the housekeeper for the Roosevelt family at Meadow Croft. A generation-spanning friendship soon blossoms between the teenage Amanda and the spry 80-year-old Bernice.
Details from her own life
A writer for local media outlets, including Great South Bay News and Fire Island News, Leuzzi pours many details from her own life into Car Dogs.
Stuck with an idea for a story, Leuzzi would pile her dogs, Bridget, a mutt, and Lucky, a boxer, into her car and drive around town until she found something that would make for a good copy.
Both dogs have since passed, but Leuzzi and her husband, Vinny, have a rescue dog named Tina and a former stray cat named Sam.
Even the 1983 Datsun that Amanda drives is a part of Leuzzi’s past. She used to drive a bronze 1983 Datsun 280Z, and she still has the 280Z ornament.
“I loved that car,” Leuzzi said.
A love of writing
Growing up in Queens, Leuzzi fell in love with the written word early.
She loved the book Little Women. She read it 13 times, by her count, and connected with Jo, the March sister who wants to become a writer.
“I always wanted to be an author,” Leuzzi said.
But writing wasn’t the career path Leuzzi followed initially.
She went to work at Avon Products’ world headquarters in Manhattan as a secretary and worked her way up to a job in corporate communications, where she would write stories about some of the more interesting “Avon Ladies” and pitch the stories to their hometown newspapers.
Leuzzi remembers getting a call from an editor at a paper in Chattanooga, Tenn., who was so impressed that she told Leuzzi she could have a career in journalism.
The comment got Leuzzi’s wheels turning.
She eventually gave up her job at Avon, and the window office that went with it, to study journalism at St. John’s University.
That led to an internship in New York Newsday’s Rego Park bureau and a long-term freelance gig writing for the big city paper.
After Leuzzi and her husband, Vinny, moved to Sayville from Queens in 1997, she started reporting for the Suffolk County News (SCN) under legendary editor John Lee, who later became editor of the now-discontinued Fire Island Tide.
She rose to replace Lee as SCN’s editor. At various times, Leuzzi also edited the Islip Bulletin and the Long Island Advance.
She has authored eight nonfiction books for young readers and is now a contributing writer for the Advance and Suffolk County News.
She joined Fire Island News in 2023 and joined Great South Bay News when it was launched in 2024.
“I’m a journalist. That’s what I am,” Leuzzi said.
A curious person by nature, Leuzzi loves plunging into the reporting on a story.
“You just don’t know what’s going to happen and what you’re going to be in the middle of,” she said.
Leuzzi’s reporting has gotten her into some unusual places, like atop the scaffolding during the renovation of the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts. And to do research for Car Dogs, she flew in a Piper Cub high over Bayport.
“It was probably one of the bravest things I’ve ever done,” the heights-averse Leuzzi said.
An award-winning journalist
Leuzzi’s reporting has earned her more than 20 awards from the New York Press Association, including a 2024 first-place award for local government coverage as part of a team from Great South Bay News and Fire Island News, and a second-place award for her interview with Academy Award nominee and Bellport resident Isabella Rossellini.
Patchogue has been part of Leuzzi’s beat for nearly 20 years.
Longtime Mayor Paul Pontieri gives Leuzzi high marks for accuracy and fairness.
“She’s a very good reporter,” Pontieri said. “What I like about her is that she tells the story about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. It’s not just a listing of facts.”
Patchogue Village honored Leuzzi in 2014 with a proclamation for her work as editor of the Long Island Advance.
Leuzzi has also written extensively about The Gateway in Bellport, covering its productions and interviewing performers such as TV star Sally Struthers.
Paul Allan, Gateway’s executive artistic director, said Leuzzi always comes prepared and asks detailed questions.
“She doesn’t write off the cuff. She does a lot of research,” Allan said. “She has a really good knack for people and details.”
