by Karen Stark (Author)
"Who'd want to hurt an artist?" Typically, no one..........unless it's Bugsy Siegel, Joe Masseria and any number of bloodthirsty gangsters who've hired Charlie Stark to decorate their speakeasies. Diving under tables and dodging bullets was trouble enough. But in the heat of the American Great Depression, Charlie, a son of Jewish immigrants, a self-taught artist and theater set designer, needs the money. So does his family. Eleven Starks endure a crowded two-room flat, a tenement slum, one of many that riddle the squalid, Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920's. In this arena, Charlie can only rely on his wits and humor to overcome poverty, danger and despair. His father, a penniless pushcart vendor, can't help him. His mother is overwhelmed with nine children, one of them dying from a grisly congenital disease, and the love of his life, Opal, an African-American aspiring school teacher, has her own issues. It's all she can do to make a living, and shield Charlie and herself from a racist world. Based on Charlie's real life memoir, Karen Stark's fictional World On A String allows us to explore her father's s rollicking escapades, his talents and flaws, his perils and pleasures, his hopes and unrequited dreams. Sweet and bittersweet, World On A String is a lusciously rich, entertaining and enlightening study of America's most challenging era from the perspective of one of America's most resourceful young men: a twenty-two year old slum kid, a Jewish Huck Finn named Charlie Stark.