The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 February 1998
by Nelson Algren
Dove Linkhorn is introduced to us as an illiterate but ambitious teenager in an anonymous Texas border town. He is looking out for number one, discarding people who help him along the way when the going gets tough. Hopping a freight to New Orleans, he eventually attains some level of comfort in its down-and-out back alleys, flophouses, bars, and brothels. Setting the story in the early years of the Depression, Algren paints a bleak but rivetingly realistic portrait of people on the fringes of an unjust society. It leaves the reader wondering how much of this world Algren experienced himself. And it left this reader wondering if the landscape he describes still exists in dark corners of New Orleans.
Also by Nelson Algren: [Nonconformity]
[Other Books set in the American South]