Billy Phelan's Greatest Game
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed explores the seedy underbelly of a Depression-era town in the second novel in the Albany cycle
Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie, moves throuh the lurid nighttime glare of Albany, New York. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of the city's sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor, until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss’s son. In relating Billy's fall from underworld grace and his storybook redemption, Kennedy captures the seamy underside of a brassy, sweaty city that would prefer to pretend that the Depression doesn't exist.
William Kennedy’s…
$29.99
January 27, 1983
William Kennedy, author, screenwriter and playwright, was born and raised in Albany, New York. Kennedy brought his native city to literary life in many of his works. The Albany cycle, includes Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Ironweed.The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and cowrote the screenplay for the The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy also wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car. Some of the other works he is known for include Roscoe and Very Old Bones.
Kennedy is the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.…