The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue

TitleThe Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue
Year of Publication1960
Publication TypeNovel
Number of Pages or Episodes246 p.
LanguageEnglish
AuthorsGoran, Lester
PublisherHoughton Mifflin Company
CityBoston
Keywordsaddiction; Black Americans; Chinese Americans; Great Depression, The; Italian Americans; Jewish Americans; Korean War; Pittsburgh Police; Polish Americans; polka; poverty; priests; Prohibition; Protestants; real estate development; Roman Catholics; sex workers; Slovak Americans; soldiers; Syrian Americans; ward heelers
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. “Paratrooper is a testament to Goran’s memorializing the lives of the 'ugly hostile people' in the slums,” says the literary critic Matthew Asprey Gear.

Notes

Allegheny County Industrial and Training School for Boys is referred to as Thorn Hill Reformatory, as it was commonly known.

Author Biography

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.

Time

1930s-50s