He knew his heart was giving out. But when Mario Puzo left the hospital on May 25 after a procedure to change his pacemaker, the author of The Godfather was determined not to write finis to his life until he had written the last page of his new novel. "I like the idea of sitting at my desk and as I finish the last word, I fall over," he joked to Carol Gino, his companion of 20 years. "But I can't die until then."

Puzo, 78, got his wish. He died in bed on July 2, in his sprawling Bay Shore, N.Y., home, shortly after a visit by Jonathan Karp, his editor at Random House, who took the train out from the city to rave about Puzo's final mafia novel, Omerta.

The people Puzo tended to write about usually died more abruptly. But while his most famous works—including the scripts for all three Godfather movies—involved the bloody doings of hard-eyed gangsters, he said his real subject was the complicated bonds of family. "I never met a real, honest-to-God gangster," he once wrote of his pre-Godfather days. But when the book was published in 1969 and went on to sell 21 million copies and inspire two Academy Award-winning movies, gangsters lined up to shake his hand. "He depicted a story of tradition and values," says Bill Bonanno, a former mobster and writer whose family once ran a business much like the Corleones'. "And what he did was tell the truth."

Puzo was born in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, the seedbed of such storied gunsels as Dutch Heinrichs and One Lung Curran. Under the watchful gaze of his mother, Maria—who raised seven children on her own after her railroad-worker husband abandoned them—Mario kept clear of the local hoods. But Maria was formidable enough.

"Whenever the Godfather opened his mouth...I heard the voice of my mother," he once wrote.

Encouraged by high school teachers to be a writer, Puzo penned two well-received novels by the mid-'60s, but neither sold well enough to allow him to quit his day jobs—as an administrative assistant with the U.S. Civil Service and as an editor for men's adventure magazines. Married to Erika Broske, whom he had met while serving in Germany in World War II—their brood comprises Anthony, 52, Dorothy, 49, Eugene, 47, Virginia, 45, and Joe, 39—Puzo set out to write the most commercial novel he could imagine: a tale of the Italian mobsters he had heard about while growing up in Hell's Kitchen.

The Godfather may have transformed Puzo's writing career, but it did little to change its author, who kept his home in modest Bay Shore. Happiest when he was surrounded by his children (after Erika died in 1978, his kids took it on themselves to do his cooking, cleaning, landscaping and financial management), Puzo's vices were cigars, good food and regular jaunts to gamble in Las Vegas. And though failing health forced him to slow down in recent years, Puzo remained at heart a simple man. "He said that if he ever got to heaven," Gino recalls, "all he'd ask for is a fresh roll with butter every morning."

Peter Ames Carlin
Mark Dagostino in New York and Lyndon Stambler in Los Angeles