The Old Neighborhood

June 1, 2014

Hillmann knows the streets, and he also knows how to tell stories--you might know his work from the Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, and NPR. So it's not surprising to see him deliver a big, sprawling, lacerating, steely-eyed account of one young man's coming of age in a mixed-race family in Chicago. Joe's life spirals downward after his older brother commits a gangland murder; will it head back up? VERDICT Unvarnished and absorbing; for readers who want to know.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2014
Hillmann's first novel is a sprawling, gangland coming-of-age tale. Set on Chicago's North Side, this urban crime story is full of surprises, thanks to its portrayal of gang affiliations complicating and even transcending racial divisions. Joe, Hillmann's teen narrator, is part of a large Irish family that adopts two girls from the Dominican Republic. The eldest son, Patrick, a gangster who slips into heroin addiction, acquires his alias, Pistol Pat, on the same evening Joe meets Ryan, nephew of the merciless Mickey. Joe and Ryan follow Pat and Mickey, who pursue and kill an Assyrian after he opens fire on a carnival. Not long after that searing lesson in violence, Angel, relocated from California, joins Joe and Ryan in their escalating escapades as Joe graduates from collecting envelopes in a protection racket to street fighting and drug dealing. The violence is graphic, the occasional sex almost pornographic, and the dialogue profane. Chicago writer Hillmann, founder of the Windy City Story Slam and a Golden Gloves champion, has written a vivid, visceral, and curiously sentimental novel of gang life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)