Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Shaky Town, a novel, explores 100 years in the life of a Los Angeles neighborhood of the same name, where Lou Mathews grew up. Shaky Town got its name because of the fault line--the most active seismic fault in California--that runs beneath its hills. A series of earthquakes in the 1920s and continuing aftershocks destroyed the real estate market--assessed values stayed low and remained so, even today. It's the only neighborhood in Los Angeles where poor people live on hills. Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, and Pat Barker's Union Street, Shaky Town tells the stories of people linked by place
Synopsis
In
Shaky Town, Lou Mathews has written a timeless novel of working-class Los Angeles. A former mechanic and street racer, he tells his story in cool and panoramic style, weaving together the tragedies and glories of one of L.A.'s eastside neighborhoods. From a teenage girl caught in the middle of a gang war to a priest who has lost his faith and hit bottom, the characters in
Shaky Town live on a dangerous faultline but remain unshakable in their connections to one another.
Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Katherine Ann Porter's Ship of Fools, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, and Pat Barker's Union Street, Shaky Town is the story of complicated, conflicted, and disparate characters bound together by place.