Author Description

"What does an eleven-year-old boy do when his classmates call him "Dumbo" and his parents don't seem to knew that he exists? His mother, the beautiful Faigele, spends her days pushing her two-year-old son Marvin around in a stroller and barely hears Jerome's clarinet playing. The answer for Jerome Charyn is to go to the local movie house and hide out for a few hours every day. At the movies, he can escape and not be himself for a little while. One day, while watching Samson and Delilah for the seventh time that week, he is suddenly grabbed from his seat and dragged down a flight of stairs, where he winds up being introduced to a whole new way of life by three "cellar rats," as Jerome likes to call them." "They make him a part of their group and he soon finds himself dressed in a Feuerman & Marx suit collecting money for Farouk, the local gangster. Many of the men remember his mother, the Dark Lady, from her days as dealer of their neighborhood poker game."--BOOK JACKET.