The Crazyladies of Pearl Street: A Novel-Fast Shipping

Description

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeplyfelt, often touching coming-of-age novel set in 1930s America.

Six-year-oldJean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerableyoung mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming conartist. With no money and nowhere else to go, the LaPointes create afragile nest in a tenement building at 238 North Pearl Street in Albany,New York.

For the next eight years, through the Great Depression andSecond World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surroundedby ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. Pearl Street isalso home to a variety of “crazyladies”: Miss Cox, the feared andridiculed teacher who ignites Jean-Luc’s imagination; Mrs. Kane, whoruns a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of herhusband’s grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarchof a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spendsevery day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War;and Jean-Luc’s own unconventional, vivacious mother. Colorful though itis, Jean-Luc never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum, and hismother’s impossible expectations are both his driving force and hisburden.

Aslegendary writer Trevanian lovingly re-creates the neighborhood of hisyouth in this funny, deeply moving coming-of-age novel, he also paints avivid portrait of a neighborhood, a city, a nation in turmoil, and thepeople waiting for a better life to begin. It’s a heartfelt andunforgettable look back at one child’s life in the 1930s and ’40s, a story that willbe remembered long after the last page is turned.