On sale date: 2012-03-2712:00:00-07:00
In The Big Town, salesman Harry Hennesey’s hopes of success, both in his household and the world, have driven him to sell his home in an Illinois small town, ship his wife and kids to his mother in Texas, and take his chances in the big city, where he has an affair with a flapper half his age. Charles A. Follette, chairman of the board of the American Prometheus Corporation, comes to him with a slick proposition: find Follette’s missing niece, and the road to riches shall be his. Harry discovers a darker secret to the identity of the missing niece and what lies behind the urgency for her detection in a city where gangsters murder ordinary citizens and everyone seems to have a get-rich scheme as the Roaring ’20s come to a thunderous close.
Praise
"Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, a veritable time-machine that whirled me through time to the dirty back roads of the American midwest in the year before the Depression. Did I mention how good the writing is? The writing is excellent… This book is a masterpiece of setting and storytelling." — Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
"[T]hose who savor authentic details of a bygone era will be rapt by Schulz’s delightful displays of staccato, wise-guy diction (‘Say, hatchet face, what’s the dope?’) and his cascading sheets of period description that set the scenes. Hand this straight-faced and multifaceted almost-satire to fans of the Southern Gothic tradition, all the way from Flannery O’Connor to John Kennedy Toole." — Ian Chipman, Booklist
Specs
- Pages
- 360
- Format
- Hardback
- Color
- Prose.
- Dimensions
- 6.1" × 9.1"
- ISBN-13
- 9781606995037