First published in 1934, this critically acclaim novel dropped out of sight during the Depression. Republished in 1964, it was the first paperback novel ever to be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review.
One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American. The central figure is David Schearl, an overwrought, phobic, and dangerously imaginative little boy. He has come to New York with his East European Jewish parents, and now, in the years between 1911 and 1913, he is exposed, shock by shock, to the blows of slum life.
Introduction by Alfred Kazin, afterword by Hana Wirth-Nesher.