Danny Cherry Jr. - Pike Boys

04/17/24 • 36 min

All Things Must Pass : Historical Fiction Podcast

It’s 1920 New Orleans and Jesse Pike is slowly ascending the New Orleans upper-class social scene. He’s the owner of the most popular brothel in the entire city, and rubs shoulders with businessmen, corrupt politicians, and stage stars alike. He’s also the leader of a violent street gang that pulls off the biggest heist of liquor since the beginning of prohibition. Jesse sets up a scheme to sell the booze, and use the profits to help him start a legitimate business. However, several obstacles get in his way: Clyde, the mentally disturbed oldest Pike sibling, is released from prison and takes issue with how Jesse runs things; Jesse's aging mentor refuses to let him leave behind crime; and an overzealous young DA decides to reopen an investigation into the liquor heist to increase his chances of being elected mayor. Jesse is forced to make a decision: does he walk away from a life of crime and his family forever? Or will he continue down the road of violence that has begun to erode his psyche, much as it has Clyde's?

The Pike Boys, according to a reviewer, is a "compelling story of the Pike family's struggles against poverty, violence, substance abuse, mental illness, and their quest to rise above it all while living in the crime-ridden New Orleans of the gangster era." It has all the thrills, plot twists, and quick pace of conventional gangster fiction, with the heart, depth, and nuance of a literary novel. In between the shootouts, violence, and debauchery, there is the overarching question of "can people actually change?" The reader will see that the answer is not so simple—especially when you live in a place like New Orleans.

(Good for fans of Mario Puzo and Dennis Lehane; and lovers of Sopranos, Godfather, and Peaky Blinders!)

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(Good for fans of Mario Puzo and Dennis Lehane; and lovers of Sopranos, Godfather, and Peaky Blinders!)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

donalee Moulton - Conflagration

On a warm spring day in April 1734, a fire raged through Montreal’s merchant quarters. When the flames finally died, 46 buildings – including the Hôtel-Dieu convent and hospital – had been destroyed. Within hours, rumors ran rampant that Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman fighting for her freedom, had started the fire with her white lover, Claude Thibault. Less than 24 hours later, Angelique was sitting in a prison cell. Her lover was nowhere to be found. More than 20 witnesses appeared before the judge, all claiming Angélique was the arsonist. But no one saw her set the fire.

It didn’t matter. In an era when lawyers were banned from practising in New France, Angélique was on her own. She denied starting the fire. Philippe Archambeau, a court clerk assigned specifically to document her case, believed Angelique might just be telling the truth. That belief only got stronger after Angélique was tortured – and finally confessed. Her captors used the brodequins to crush Angélique’s leg. Her spirit remained indomitable.

As Angélique was paraded through the streets of Montreal, Incendiare embroidered across the front of her white chemise, Archambeau finally realized what really happened the night Montreal burned to the ground.

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Next Episode

Henry Rozycki - Walk the Earth as Brothers: A Novel

Two Jewish brothers plan futures full of achievement and maybe fame. But Warsaw in the summer of 1939 is no place for dreamers.

Ian is thrown west to Paris. There, he unexpectedly falls in love with Alicia, a mysterious Frenchwoman, but then must leave her to race across France to safety in Casablanca. Daniel ends up in the Siberian Gulag, where he faces blizzards, starvation, and the often-lethal cruelties of guards and fellow prisoners. He too finds someone, an exiled poet named Nadhya, until he must choose: stay with her or cross all of Russia to return to the future he'd envisioned.

Walk the Earth as Brothers is the story of two pawns in a titanic world war, of bravery, random chance, kindness, betrayal and love, and of what happens to the hopes and dreams of Ian and Daniel.

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