Deutschtown's Pigeon Hill

Christmas season 1949. A sixteen-year-old boy, climbing public steps at night, surprises an adult couple in an illicit affair. The man, startled by the sudden appearance of the teenager, loses his life. The married woman convinces the lad to keep the events of the tragedy between themselves. The boy agrees to her plan of secrecy. The story begins then with a secret being shared between a youth of one generation and an adult of another. It is a story of two generations. The teens in the novel experience the frustration and exhilaration of growing up, falling in and out of love, demonstrating bravado, and experimenting with sex. Their parents suffer from the disappointments of life. One father is more mindful of the past than the present. Another father is a loner, steals from his employer and schemes to abandon his adulterous wife. A father of twins is dictatorial with his daughter, but allows greater freedom for her twin brother. This novel is a story of changing times. The fictional hilly community of old homes, small roads, neighborhood stores, peddlers, and trolleys, is losing to a new way of supermarkets, shopping malls, automobiles, and suburban housing plans. The government is becoming more interested with their welfare, building housing projects, causing the previously separated ethnic groups to mingle. Deutschtown's Pigeon Hill is a story of people moving into more modern times, while clinging onto a fleeing past.