Swirled All the Way to the Shrub

The Roaring Twenties were bellowing along—until they weren’t. In a splintered bar in Boston, Pinky deVroom, newspaperman, amateur cynic and would-be-novelist, clutches his sour Prohibition brandy and watches his world get sucked down into the vortex. Hope comes in the form of an astute, comely literary agent named Elfred. But hope can be its own form of hell. Watch game Pinky twist, squirm and waffle while the world wobbles. Literature has never had a hero named Pinky—but despite literature’s measured qualms, this is its greatest chance.The Depression and Prohibition’s consequences are fundamental to the work, as are the appearances of some real-life figures such as Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Company and Alice Hamilton, the pioneering scientist. The effects of lead poisoning, the unfettered joys of the “banana messenger” and the glories of Telechron clocks also have their time in the sun. As do rigorous bartending practices and the perils of owning a hat. But all those tributaries of the story return to Pinky: Through continued tests and failures, through the comradeship of good friends, through his own lacerations and partial healings, will he find fulfillment? Will those friends, a mysterious secret society, and the judicious prodding of the remarkable Doctor Alice Hamilton help him get the girl, the book deal, or at least hang on to his job? Or his hat?