The Old Neighborhood

Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago-a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime.

Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do--and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it.

This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.

Bill Hillmann is an award-winning writer and storyteller from Chicago. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Newcity, Salon.com, and has been broadcast on NPR. He’s told stories around the world with his internationally acclaimed storytelling series the Windy City Story Slam. Hillmann is a Union Construction Laborer and a bull-runner in Spain. In the not so distant past, Hillmann was a feared street brawler, gang affiliate, drug dealer, convict, and Chicago Golden Glove Champion.

...Maybe I’m writing to people like me, looking back and maybe regretting some of the things they did in their pasts and trying to forgive or at least stop being so angry about what they endured, trying to come to terms with it all and heal.