The Children — Howard Fast

Four children of immigrants grow up together in the back alleys of New York City's tenements, under the looming shadow of racism

Ishky is Jewish; Marie and Shomake are Irish; Ollie is Italian. All children of immigrants, they are confronted daily by the prejudice that rules in one of the world's greatest urban centers: New York City. Living in slums, they must rely on each other to overcome hunger, disease, violence, and the bigotry of those who arrived before them. Fighting for a better life against the tide of poverty, the children must overcome their own city's barbarism, or be consumed by it.

Heartrending in its scope and harrowing in its realism, The Children is an elegy of the ghettoes and a moving cri de coeur against bigotry and oppression in all its forms.