Third and Indiana: A Novel

by Steve Lopez

Overview

In the Philadelphia neighborhood known as the Badlands, drug gangs rule absolutely. Each time a life is lost in the carnage of the local drug wars, a boldly drawn chalk outline of a body appears on the street leading up to City hall: a teenaged dealer, a priest, a little girl with a jump rope. Ofelia Santoro rides her bicycle through the dark, decaying streets, looking for her fourteen-year-old-son, Gabriel. She’s afraid of what she might find. Gabriel has fallen in with the most savage of the drug dealers, but now wants to get out—if he can. In this gritty, fast-moving novel, acclaimed Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez brings home the violence that is scarring America’s vast urban wastelands, and the humanity that might save them.

“An unfancy prose is streaked by strong, cinematic images . . . Lopez aims to prick consciences, in the tradition of the documentary novelist, and he does so with considerable style.”—The Daily Telegraph
 
“Lopez has done what Balzac, Dickens . . . and Dostoevsky did so masterfully: he has taken a torch to the back of the cave and returned to tell us what he has seen.” –Pete Hamill, The Philadelphia Inquirer 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140239454
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/1995
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,066,505
Product dimensions:	5.07(w) x 7.71(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steve Lopez is the author of several books, including The Sunday Macaroni Club and The Soloist. In 2009, The Soloist was made into a movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. Lopez is a columnist with the Los Angeles Times and lives in California.

What People are Saying About This

Tim O'Brien

"Lopez writes from the heart and the gut....a gripping and moving story."

Editorial Reviews

This hard-edged, stunning first novel is set on and around the corner of Third and Indiana in the ``Badlands'' of Philadelphia. Fourteen-year-old Gabriel Santoro has been assigned to this spot by a local drug king, Diablo, and it is here that the boy makes a small fortune by handing out crack to people in passing cars. Gabriel has run away from home, and his mother, Ofelia, aided by a sympathetic priest, is looking for him. What she doesn't know is that her son is staying with Eddie Passarelli, who needs 10 grand to pay back a mobster for the loss of a loaned truck; meanwhile, Diablo is demanding two grand from Gabriel to make up for an alleged shortage in his cash count. Money, with its awful power, is almost a separate character in this novel. Some, like Gabriel, become drug dealers to get more of it; others, like Eddie, are endangered because they don't have enough of it. Lopez (a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer ) doesn't preach, however; with brutal honesty, he alternates scenes of despair with glimmerings of hope and, even when detailing matter-of-fact violence, he writes with compassion about those trapped in a world where men like Diablo make the rules and are the arbiters of life and death. He also employs a brilliant visual image: spray-painted silhouettes that appear on North Broad Street whenever a teenager dies in a gun-related incident. It's an image that is as haunting as this tough, compelling novel. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Lopez has done what Balzac, Dickens...and Dostevsky did so masterfully: he has take a torch to the back of the cave and returned to tell us what he has seen." -- The Philadelphia Enquirer

Pete Hamill