@book{331,
  keywords = {Roman Catholics, Pittsburgh Police, Italian Americans, soldiers, poverty, Great Depression, The, Prohibition, Polish Americans, Slovak Americans, Korean War, sex workers, ward heelers, Syrian Americans, Chinese Americans, polka, addiction, real estate development, priests, Black Americans, Protestants, Jewish Americans},
  author = {Lester Goran},
  title = {The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue},
  abstract = {Ike-o Hartwell—born into the fictionalized Hill District slum of Sobaski’s Stairway (named for a Prohibition-Era bootlegger)—learns to survive in 1940s Pittsburgh amid the neon glow of pawnshops and pool halls peopled by racketeers, pimps, gangs, and ward heelers.  After a dishonorable discharge from the army, Hartwell dresses as a paratrooper and returns to Mechanic Avenue expecting a hero’s welcome.  “<em>Paratrooper</em> is a testament to Goran’s memorializing the lives of the 'ugly hostile people' in the slums,” says the literary critic Matthew Asprey Gear.},
  year = {1960},
  pages = {246 p.},
  publisher = {Houghton Mifflin Company},
  address = {Boston},
  note = {Allegheny County Industrial and Training School for Boys is referred to as Thorn Hill Reformatory, as it was commonly known.},
  language = {English},
}