Streetlife

Streetlife is a collection of short stories that focuses on--and shows--the harsh realities of life on the street, on the edges of those streets and how easily a person could be forced to live on those streets from just one unfortunate circumstance. Here then is an offering of 22 stories that interweave humor with the all too-often coincidental and pathetic circumstances that land so many of these characters down a dark road to oblivion.
In "Liberty City," we see that there is in fact more poverty and hopelessness than there is liberty--in this Miami ghetto--as we are taken inside the lives of a dozen or more residents, more than a few of which end up dead or in prison, through circumstances that play themselves out in the 1960's and 70's and have not changed for the better since then, in too many ghettoes in America. In "Mr. Payback" we see an aspiring comedian 'attack' the wrong audience members and the terrible, tragic circumstances from that confrontation. In "The Sheik Is Dead" we see a middle-aged real estate salesman--who moonlights as a comedian--come to a crossroads in his life when he sees the chance to hit what every salesman, every hustler, every con-man and probably every American male dreams of, so much money he'll never have to work (or worry) ever again. It turns out almost exactly as he had dreamed it would but then fate steps in to deal, as she so often does, from the bottom of the deck, and up come aces and eights. And in the title story, we meet a young professional fighter who has a fight scheduled even as he sleeps on the beach and struggles to get his body and mind right--not only for the upcoming bout but--for his upcoming and ongoing struggle with life.