Silver Wolves
Magical and grim, urban yet otherworldly, Silver Wolves is a South Bronx fairy tale. On these mean streets, amid brutality and poverty, miracles happen. Perhaps the biggest miracle is the author. At 88, after 50 works in many genres, Jerome Charyn has produced his first young adult novel, a tale of legendary deeds and romance—and gang warfare.
It’s 1952. Our hero, 15-year-old Jonah Salt, languishes in a vile dungeon (juvenile jail). Only a miracle can spring him … His story, however, really began 10 years before, when he and his idolized older brother, Michael, discovered a filthy, bloody, yellow-eyed wolf under their stoop. When washed, its dirty fur turned silver. Although this apparition soon vanished, it inspired the name and insignia of their gang. Led by Michael, the Silver Wolves roamed the Bronx streets wearing jackets with yellow eyes on their backs. Yet they were Robin Hoods, not ordinary hoods. Besides mischief, they did good deeds and kept the neighborhood safe.
But now Michael is a military prisoner in Castle Williams on Governors Island. Rival gangs threaten the Wolves’ territory. It’s all up to Jonah, but fortunately, magical good luck strikes. Aided by his own talents, Jonah enrolls in the High School of Music and Art, which Charyn himself attended in 1952.
Jonah’s further adventures unfold in a wonder-world of castles and palaces (a.k.a. schools, prisons, and police stations), inhabited by a Cafeteria Queen, Kid Galahad (a bare-knuckle fighter), an advertising baron, the Cannibals (a rival gang), a Pickle Man, a fairy godfather, and a high-I.Q. Manhattan princess in a chariot (a wheelchair). Also present: autobiography, insanity, antisemitism, polio, and abortion. Nevertheless, the whole marvelous tale is flavored with humor as tangy as the half-sour pickles that the Pickle Man sells.
