Gaslight Sonatas

Gaslight Sonatas traces the private hungers of city people who live on the edge of hope, where love, work, and luck can all turn cruelly fragile. In one thread, Gertie Slayback, a lonely New York shop girl, transforms the drudgery of rooming-house life and factory routine into a dream of home, marriage, and the steady companionship of James P. Batch. Their dinners, movies, and Saturday-night rituals feel tender and precarious at once, until her devotion drives her through Manhattan's crowded streets and into a tense confrontation over another woman, May Scully, money, and the kind of future Jimmie may choose. Another thread follows Gertie and Jimmie as a Bronx couple building a modest life together, all teasing affection and wartime urgency, while a parallel marriage, that of Ann 'Lisbeth and Blutch Connors, is shadowed by gambling, fear, and a wife's plea for security. Ann dreams of a small business, a chicken farm, and ordinary peace, but Blutch remains drawn to the tables and one more wager. Across these stories, the book finds comedy, irony, and heartbreak in the crowded streets and hidden tragedies of urban life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.