The History of Wally Stokes

Book excerpt: The History of Wally Stokes is the hilarious story of an unlikely hero who finds himself caught up in the turbulent events of a big city during the Great Depression. The setting is Hudson City, a New Jersey working-class city during the harsh winter of 1936. The whimsical mock-epic narrative is filled with fast-talking theatrical impresarios, over-the-hill vaudevillians, boarding-house eccentrics, inept union leaders, oddball newspaper writers, and a odd collection of felonious capitalists, blue-collar workers, and common vagabonds. Into this free-for-all steps Wally Stokes, a retiring correspondence-school graduate, whose life unexpectedly transformed on day in the waiting room of the Hudson City Evening Gazette.