Download The Crazyladies of Pearl Street AudioBook Free
Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching coming-of-age novel occur 1930s America.
Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming con artist. Without money and nowhere else going, the LaPointes produce a fragile nest in a tenement building at 238 North Pearl Street in Albany, New York.
For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. Pearl Street is also home to a number of “crazyladies”: Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites Jean-Luc’s imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the rear of her husband’s supermarket; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc’s own unconventional, vivacious mother. Colorful though it is, Jean-Luc never stops dreaming of a means from the slum, and his mother’s impossible expectations are both his driving force and his burden.
As legendary writer Trevanian lovingly re-creates the neighborhood of his youth in this funny, deeply moving coming-of-age novel, he also paints a vivid portrait of a neighborhood, a city, a nation in turmoil, and individuals waiting for an improved life to begin with. It’s a heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child’s life in the 1930s and ’40s, a tale which will be remembered long after the last page is turned.
