This tale of a street urchin is much more than the adventures and misadventures of a boy growing up unsupervised in small-city America in the late 1940s and 1950s. It is a picture of community life in that western Pennsylvania industrial town -- its struggles and its successes during the economic upheaval that followed World War II. It adds the perspective of the same boy as a seasoned journalist, who has followed the region for 35 years as a reporter, editor and commentary writer on two daily newspapers.. The author's hometown is an American melting pot, a place where hard work was necessary just to get by for most; and in which education provided the only real opportunity to reach the American Dream. It is an America prior to Great Society social programs and the broad safety net that came decades later. It was the beginning of the middle class for some, but poverty and low wages for others; of a well-structured society, but with discrimination much a part of it. In this true story, the author's hard-luck family goes from riches to rags because of untimely deaths. The boy's widowed mother with five young children finds out just how hard it is to get by without a reliable job. And family members watch in horror as their house is gutted by fire, forever ending their dream of "normal" family life. It takes deep-seated loyalty and unflinching hope to keep the family together. The story is told in journalistic style with plenty of detail, wit and humor. Only after he has finished the book the author realizes that what he has written is also an odyssey -- the story of a boy's never-ending search for a father he never knew, in a nation in which so many fathers had been lost. Enjoy www.mid-americastreeturchin.com