Jerome Charyn

"Ravage & Son reflects the lost world of Manhattan's Lower East Side-the cradle of Jewish immigration during the first years of the twentieth century-in a dark mirror. Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers. He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the chance...