The Bold Saboteurs

A “startling, terrifying” novel about a troubled young street thief in the gritty Washington, DC, of the thirties and forties (Houston Post).

At the park where the outcasts of Washington, DC, gather, everyone calls him Yogi. Although only a boy, he steals like a man, taking jewelry and money from wherever and whomever he can. When he’s flush, Yogi spends like a prince, eating beef stew and wasting whole afternoons at the cinema. When he’s broke, he looks for someone else to rob.
 
At home, Yogi goes by his real name: George Brown. With their violent, alcoholic father absent for long periods of time and their mother too brittle to cope, George and his older brother learn to fend for themselves. Roland becomes a security guard while George turns to a life of crime. But to survive among the prostitutes, muggers, and extortionists who prowl the streets of the nation’s capital, a young man must always have his wits about him, and Yogi/George is prone to schizophrenic hallucinations. When he is locked up in jail for a night and experiences his most vivid delusion yet, he fears that the line between sanity and insanity has become permanently blurred.
 
Brilliantly fusing hard-edged realism and surrealistic flights of fantasy, The Bold Saboteurs is a highly original work of art from the groundbreaking author of Who Walk in Darkness.