TY - SER
KW - Roman Catholics
KW - Pittsburgh Police
KW - Italian Americans
KW - soldiers
KW - poverty
KW - Great Depression, The
KW - Prohibition
KW - Polish Americans
KW - Slovak Americans
KW - Korean War
KW - sex workers
KW - ward heelers
KW - Syrian Americans
KW - Chinese Americans
KW - polka
KW - addiction
KW - real estate development
KW - priests
KW - Black Americans
KW - Protestants
KW - Jewish Americans
AU - Lester Goran
AB - 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.
C1 - 1930s-50s
C3 - Allegheny County; Allegheny River; Ohio River; Monongahela River; Chartiers Creek; Pittsburgh; Downtown; Oakland; Hill District; Miller Elementary School; East Liberty; North Side; Marshall Twp.; Allegheny County Industrial and Training School for Boys; S
C4 - Literary; Slum; War
CY - Boston
LA - English
M3 - Novel
N1 - Allegheny County Industrial and Training School for Boys is referred to as Thorn Hill Reformatory, as it was commonly known.
N2 - 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.
PB - Houghton Mifflin Company
PP - Boston
PY - 1960
RN - Lester Goran (1928-2014), born and raised in a housing project in Pittsburgh's Hill District, was a novelist and professor of English at the University of Miami. He attended Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue High School and Schenley High School and he earned a BA and MA in English at the University of Pittsburgh. For more than 50 years he wrote fiction set in Pittsburgh. He lived in Miami, Florida.
EP - 246 p.
TI - The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue
ER -