“When Jack Was With Us” is a powerful work of urban realism that plunges readers into the raw, unsentimental streets of New York City from the late 1950s through the turbulent 1960s. In the tradition of E.L. Doctorow, William Kennedy, Philip Roth, and Jimmy Breslin, Brad Holway delivers a vivid, uncompromising narrative that refuses nostalgia and instead reveals life as it was lived, beautiful, brutal, chaotic, and honest.
Rather than centering on a single hero, the novel weaves together the lives of multiple characters whose stories intersect amid the volatile ethnic, social, and political landscape of the city. As the nation shifts from postwar calm to cultural upheaval, these characters struggle for meaning, survival, redemption, or escape. Their personal battles mirror a city and a country undergoing seismic change.
About the Book
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving America, “When Jack Was With Us” captures a neighborhood-level view of history as it unfolds in real time. The novel explores identity, morality, and consequence through interconnected lives shaped by class, culture, and circumstance. As New York City becomes a living symbol of a nation in flux, each character confronts moments of growth, loss, and reckoning. This is a coming-of-age story not only for its characters, but for the American collective psyche itself.
About the Author
Brad Holway, writing as B.K. Holway was born in 1951 and raised in working-class neighborhoods throughout New York City. Like the characters in his novel, he attended New York public schools, before earning a degree from Queens College and a doctorate in Social Anthropology from McGill University. His career included service as a federal bureaucrat, extensive travel, and retirement in 2005. Drawing on firsthand experience of the people, culture, and ethos of the 1950s and 1960s, Holway brings authenticity and authority to a story where the true central character is an era whose impact continues to resonate today.
When everything you thought you knew about America was changing, who were you becoming, and what would the city make of you?
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