A master storyteller's novel of crime, corruption, and antisemitism
in early 20th-century Manhattan
Ravage & Son reflects the lost world of Manhattan's Lower East
Side--the cradle of Jewish immigration during the first years of the
twentieth century--in a dark mirror.
Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the
conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers.
He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off
to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the
chance to escape his gritty origins and instead becomes a detective for
the Kehilla, a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help
the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals. Charged with rooting
out the Jewish "Mr. Hyde," a half-mad villain who attacks the
prostitutes of Allen Street, Ben discovers that his fate is irrevocably
tied to that of this violent, sinister man.
A lurid tale of revenge, this wildly evocative, suspenseful noir is
vintage Jerome Charyn.
