To open this book is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy
Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the
notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us
along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm,
apprentice, and finally protégé to one of the great murdering gangsters
of the Depression-era underworld in New York City. The luminous
transformation of fact into fiction that is E. L. Doctorow's trademark
comes to triumphant fruition in Billy Bathgate*,* a peerless
coming-of-age tale and one of Doctorow's boldest and most beloved
bestsellers.