'Fighting spirit': How a Brockton boy rose to write best-sellers

BROCKTON — Dave Wedge doesn't fear controversy.

Exhibit 1: He orders pineapple pizza at the Cod.

"There's people that think this is sacrilege," the Brockton native and best-selling author says over a just-out-of-the-oven pie. "It's a staple in the Wedge family."

The 1988 Brockton High grad has six books in print, five of them with his collaborator Casey Sherman. The most recent, this year's "Riding With Evil: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang," continues a theme you'll see in his books: overcoming adversity. "Riding With Evil" tells the story of Ken Croke, an ATF agent who went undercover to bust the Pagans.

"That guy was up against some serious odds," Wedge said. "He was fighting not only the Pagans but he was afraid of getting killed by the Hells Angels and then he also had political backlash within the Bureau. I like all those stories that have that element of someone really achieving great things in the face of great odds."

His books tackle Boston's recovery from the Marathon bombing, Tom Brady's bounce-back from Deflategate and Pete Frates' battle against ALS, among other tales of folks who won't quit. It's a theme that resonates with his home town.

"Everyone that you ever meet from Brockton has a certain civic pride, no matter whether they're Black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever," Wedge said. "I just think that everyone that comes from here has a fighting spirit."

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Brockton roots

Wedge grew up on the South Side on Country Club Lane, less than a mile and a half from Cape Cod Cafe. Dave's father, Roger, also graduated from Brockton High. He was a Marine and accountant who owned East Side Cinema in Brockton and would go on to own 11 theaters, including ones in Quincy and Seekonk. He died recently. Dave's mother, Arlene Cornelius, also went to school in Brockton. Going back another generation, Dave Wedge's grandparents worked in Brockton's shoe factories.

"I just have always loved the movies and I knew I wanted to be a writer from a very young age," he said.

Wedge says Brockton roots made him who he is, from his first job (at the old Atlantic Fish Market) to the halls at the high school.

"I attribute a very large part of who I am and the places that I've gone and the things that I've achieved in life to my experiences at Brockton High," Wedge said.

At BHS he came under the wing of English teacher Beverly Joyce, continuing a path set when he was in kindergarten at the Arnone. His reading teacher there, Eileen Hebert, saw he had a gift for words.

"She helped instill in me a love of reading that persists to this day," Wedge said.

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Wedge got his start in newspapers. His first paid journalism gig was at the Taunton Daily Gazette after he graduated from Boston College. He went on to a career at the Boston Herald, and you'll see his writing in places like Esquire and Boston Magazine.

Along the way, he's written not infrequently about his home town. His first published story outside the Boston College newspaper was a profile of Steven Marciano, nephew of Rocky Marciano, for a BC alumni magazine. Although he doesn't live in Brockton anymore, he helps his city as a contractor doing PR for Mayor Robert Sullivan's administration.

So, what does this son of Brockton say about the city's people today?

"True Brocktonians will always give you the opportunity to show who you really are." Wedge said, "and if you show them that you're a person of character, they will respect you. They will collaborate with you and they will be fair to you. But if you cross them, that's not good. You know, we stand up for ourselves."

'Wedge' — Some kinda pen name?

Now, about that family name. "Wedge" just sounds too perfect for a Brockton guy who writes hard-hitting crime stories. Gotta be made up, right?

The real story, he says, is that his family originally came from the Montreal area. They were Aucoins. In the Brockton context, that sounded Irish: "O'Coin." As a proud French Canadian, that didn't sit well with Wedge's father's father.

"They had pride in their French Canadian heritage so they changed the name to Wedge because Aucoin literally translates to 'In the corner.'" Wedge said.

As ways to tell stories have evolved, so has the way Wedge tells them. You may have seen him as a talking head on Fox News or caught the Mark Wahlberg movie "Patriots Day," which was based on "Boston Strong." Wedge did a well-received podcast with Sherman called "Saints, Sinners & Serial Killers." The multimedia duo will host a "true crime" evening at the Wilbur Theater in May, in which they'll discuss the hunt for Whitey Bulger.

The books

• Riding With Evil: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang (with Ken Croke), William Morrow, 2022
• Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture & Killing of America's Most Wanted Crime Boss (with Casey Sherman), HarperCollins, 2021
• The Last Days of John Lennon (with James Patterson and Sherman), Little, Brown, 2020
• 12: The Inside Story of Tom Brady's Fight for Redemption (with Sherman), Little, Brown, 2018
• The Ice Bucket Challenge: Pete Frates and the Fight Against ALS (with Sherman), ForeEdge, 2017
• Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy (with Sherman), University Press of New England, 2015

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