Little Chicago

Little Chicago opens in the office of Children s Services, where 11-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker trying to determine what has happened to him. His emotions are blocked at first, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother s boyfriend, and is released into his mother s custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy s attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Blacky is helped at first by a classmate, Mary Jane, who has also been ostracized, and then by the gun that he buys easily from his sister s boyfriend. Little Chicago is an unblinking look at the world of a child who has been neglected and abused. It portrays head-on the indifference and hostility of classmates, teachers, and even Blacky s mother, once these people learn his secret. Like Sura in The Buffalo Tree and Whensday in The Copper Elephant, Blacky is one of Adam Rapp s mesmerizing voices, more so because it is a voice so rarely heard."