Bluff City Pawn

May 1, 2014
Huddy Marr owns a pawnshop in a run-down section of Memphis. He longs to move over to the better side of town and to deal with a more respectable clientele, and he thinks he may have found his way out when the widow of a longtime customer offers to sell him her late husband's very valuable gun collection. Huddy can almost taste the new life he has envisioned for his young wife and baby boy, but there are two things standing in his way: his brothers, Joe and Harlan. Joe, who has worked hard since the age of 15, when he saved his family from being turned out of the house by starting his own landscaping business, is now a wealthy developer. Huddy needs him to provide half the cash for his gun deal, but Joe's business is seriously underwater. Harlan, a small-time criminal on the run from Florida, is a motor-mouthed hothead who wants in on Huddy's gun deal. First-novelist Schottenfeld eloquently captures the seedy milieu, Huddy's desperate dreams, and the brothers' complicated relationship in this unsparing dissection of class and capitalism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)