Red Baker is a Baltimore steel worker suddenly out of work and faced with a bleaker than usual future (this time it doesn’t look as though the jobs are coming back). Red has a wife and son … the boy has some genuine talents (basketball and guitar among them) … his wife was once the most sort after girl in high school and there are resentments in town about Red landing her as his wife … but lately Red has noticed the flaws in his wife (her arms are showing loose skin where they used to be tight) … and he’s kind of fallen for the midlife crisis other woman, a stripper at a local club run by an eye-talian wannabe gangster and his misfit crew … Red also has a rough and tough best friend he’s known and shared his life with since they were kids … and when both lose their jobs at the steel mill, times get a lot tougher. At 39 years of age, when the layoffs are no longer temporary, Red and his fellow workers are left feeling cheated by a failed American dream. Now that they’re out of work, they need to release the excess energy that can drive men over the edge … so they drink and pop pills and take jobs parking cars ... and do everything one can imagine to ignore what their lives are fast becoming (as obsolete as the machinery in the mill that just closed down) … but underneath it all, Red is a decent man … one who still loves his family, but has been cast aside for following that dream he invested so much of his life into … a dream that has failed him and so many others in his community.I loved the Americana/nostalgia in this book … an entire rift on the Honeymooners (with repeat visits), and why men find it funny as opposed to most women (especially when the men are feeling completely shitty about themselves/circumstances) … escapism, Chef of the Future style …Author Robert Ward deserves the same applause today he deserved 25 years ago (see Booklist *STARRED* Review below). This is a terrific read, Amici … one I’d recommend high schools put on their reading lists so some of today’s youngin’s understand not just what happened to their parents and grandparents world, but what’s happening to their world, no matter what shade of collar they intend to wear in the ever decreasing workforce. HIGHLY RECOMMENED …