Ironweed

Summary

Set in Albany during the Great Depression, the novel follows Francis Phelan, a former big-league ballplayer turned drifter, as he wanders his old city and is pursued by the ghosts of people he has loved and harmed. Kennedy mixes lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose with unsparing detail about hobo life, Catholic guilt, and urban poverty. The book is the centerpiece of his Albany Cycle and a defining work of late-twentieth-century regional fiction.