Hawley Road

An Inspiring Story of Grit and Perseverance

It's the middle of the Great Depression, and life's tough for the residents of Hawley Road, in a run-down area of Milwaukee. But whether it's scoring an entire Hershey bar for a nickel (an enormous sum in those days) or watching that first moving picture show, John Redmann still manages to encounter life's beauty and wonder. Hawley Road is a memoir of his 1930s boyhood, a time filled with light stomachs and political unrest but also, Redmann shows, enormous compassion and love. John's father, a mostly unemployed tinkerer, walks his shoes bare for the odd job; his mother, a dedicated and steadfast woman, manages to raise three children while somehow eking out a living for the family. Meanwhile, John befriends a motley gang of neighborhood kids, whose antics fill their blazing-hot summers with the small pleasures of childhood. Yet with hardship all around, the realities of poverty begin to creep in despite his parents' best efforts, and Redmann records it all with an eye keen beyond his years.

A funny and poignant chronicle of childhood, Hawley Road is about a generation that persevered and came of age during America's darkest hour. But its warm stories of a youth fully experienced make it more than an important historical touchstone and one sure to charm anyone who has ever been young.