Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet:
a funny, deeply felt, often touching coming-of-age novel set in 1930s
America.
Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but
vulnerable young mother have been abandoned--again--by his father, a
charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else to go, the LaPointes
create a fragile nest in a tenement building at 238 North Pearl Street
in Albany, New York.
For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World
War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward
heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. Pearl Street is also home
to a variety of "crazyladies" Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher
who ignites Jean-Luc's imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty
parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband's grocery store;
Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family
across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to
her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc's own
unconventional, vivacious mother. Colorful though it is, Jean-Luc never
stops dreaming of a way out of the slum, and his mother's impossible
expectations are both his driving force and his burden.
As legendary writer Trevanian lovingly re-creates the neighborhood of
his youth in this funny, deeply moving coming-of-age novel, he also
paints a vivid portrait of a neighborhood, a city, a nation in turmoil,
and the people waiting for a better life to begin. It's a heartfelt and
unforgettable look back at one child's life in the 1930s and '40s, a
story that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.
