by Pete Hamill, 2007, Kindle edition by the Hachette Book Group

This is a story of  a doctor who grew up in a tough area of Manhattan and then enlisted in the army.  He was in the trenches in France in WWI and then returned to his old neighborhood to resume his practice.  In the very first pages of the book, his daughter dumps her child on his doorstep and takes off for Spain.

The story focuses on how he deals with having to bring up a child in this environment while trying to carry on with his own life.

While the book does provide some insights regarding how it was in this New York neighborhood during the Great Depression, it seems to focus a lot more on the relationship the doctor develops with his grandson and another individual who comes into his life.  The book sometimes seems to lack some energy and the ending is less that I had hoped for.  I enjoyed reading it, but it fell short of being a really memorable book.