Children of the Whirlwind by Leroy Scott

Description

Maggie has grown up in the rooms above a pawnshop in a New York back street, among the gang of her father Old Jimmie, the theatrical Barney Palmer, and the strange tenants who drift through the block. The mob’s grand scheme is a stock-selling swindle aimed at a single well-chosen sucker, and Maggie — quick, beautiful, unlettered — has been set to learn gentility by watching real ladies in the hotel where she carries cigarettes, so she can be walked in to complete the trick.

Everything fractures when Laughing Larry Brainard, fresh out of Sing Sing, announces that he has considered the business arithmetic and intends to run straight. His decision splits the gang, earns him a dangerous enemy, and forces Maggie to choose between the life she was born into and the one she could become. Scott, a journalist of the Progressive era, wrote the underworld with lived knowledge and reformer’s hope.

Why readers still come back to it

• A heroine learning to be a lady whose real lesson is the hard one.
• The New York underworld rendered with documentary honesty.
• Larry Brainard’s choice to go straight — the moral engine of the book.

About this DodaBooks edition

Set for a fast, gripping read: clear type, a working table of contents, and brisk chapters that suit the two-fisted story. The downtown rooms open as soon as the file reaches your device.