For Michael J. Iantosca, Maplewood is more than the setting of a first novel; it is part of the story he carried away from home.

Now living in Asheville, North Carolina, the South Orange and Maplewood native has returned to familiar ground through fiction rather than a change of address.

His debut, Is It You?, follows Chase Marino from the rush of first love into an adult life shaped by ambition, distance and memory.

Chase thinks his first car will make him grown up, until meeting Claire Davenport changes what growing up means.

The story

begins in the late 1970s and reaches into television, Hollywood aspirations and Cold War intrigue.

Yet its most personal thread runs through the streets and landmarks Iantosca knew as a young person.

Columbia High School, the train station and Maplewood Memorial Park help give the novel a recognizable hometown texture.

South Mountain Reservation, Hemlock Falls, Grunnings and the Maplewood Theater also appear in the world he has built.

For local readers, those places may carry memories of their own, making the fictional journey feel unexpectedly close.

The locations are not simply scenery; they help explain why home keeps pulling at the characters.

Iantosca attended Columbia High School, wrote for its student newspaper and worked as a freelance photographer while growing up.

He remembers photographing flooding at Cameron Field, an experience that speaks to how closely he watched his community.

After decades of professional writing, he has drawn on that familiarity for his first book without presenting it as autobiography.

The distinction matters: the feelings and surroundings come from lived experience, while the story belongs to its characters.

That blend gives the Is It You novel a compelling question about the people and choices that remain with us.

Writing it also brought back the emotional intensity of youth and places Iantosca had not revisited in years.

He extended the project into music, composing original songs inspired by the characters and imagining a possible screen adaptation.

For this Maplewood NJ author, returning home on the page is less about nostalgia than understanding what stays.