Buffalo Nickel

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Salas's fiercely eloquent account of growing up in a family roiled by drug addiction, crime and suicide is a scorching read. He idolized his older brother Al, a professional boxer who popped in and out of reform schools and prisons for pimping, selling bootlegged liquor and petty theft. Their oldest brother, Eddie, a Harvard-educated pharmacist, committed suicide, tormented by his bisexuality and angry at the father who had rejected him. Moving from a Colorado mining town to Denver to a California boomtown and finally to Oakland, Calif., during the Depression, Salas eked out a living selling crucifixes door to door to support his pregnant teenage girlfriend, whom he married. Al, a junkie, pushed him into the ring and tried to lead him into crime as well, but Salas ultimately spurned the brother who let him down, and went on to become a successful novelist. This pounding novelistic autobiography, punctuated by the suicides of several relatives and friends, climaxes with a boxing match between the two brothers, in which they figuratively spill their guts. (Aug.)

Library Journal

In his novels, Salas ( Tatoo the Wicked Cross , LJ 9/1/67) has written of the gritty and desperate world of young people in California. In this memoir, he re-creates his family life almost as a Manichean dialectic between his two brothers, Eddy and Al. Eddy is highly intelligent and hardworking. He studies at Harvard and owns a pharmacy. Al worms his way out of the army to become a professional boxer, ending up as a junkie willing to betray members of his own family for a fix. They both try to influence Floyd, who, as of course we already know, becomes a celebrated novelist. Salas's writing is so heartfelt and powerful that the memoir, as much about Al as about Floyd himself, succeeds in creating the suspense associated with fiction. His descriptions of amateur boxing matches and police surveillance of suspected drug users are especially wonderful, and the pathos of watching his own nieces and nephews die one by one is particuarly wrenching. Recommended for public libraries, particularly those serving Hispanic patrons.-- Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York

Kirkus Reviews

Piercing and eloquent coming-of-age story from novelist- boxer Salas. Salas had two big brothers he adored. When he was 11, his mother died, leaving him primarily in the care of his brother Al, his father (who was often away in a bar), and his brother Eddy, who was at college. Al was a Golden Gloves champion and taught Salas how to box, and they became even closer when Eddy committed suicide. Al, who had shown a disinclination for work ever since he faked insanity for an Army discharge, began attempting to involve Salas in petty crime. Salas, torn between his idolized brother and his desire to do right, trained hard in the ring (here penning some the best boxing scenes since Leonard Gardner's Fat City, 1969) and studied hard. As he grew, his role and Al's slowly reversed: Al became deeply involved in buncos, theft, and heroin, and Salas attempted to steer him to a healthy way of life. Salas's photographic re-creation of the 1950's seedy Oakland bars, lowlifes, and vice squads from which he tried to rescue Al could make a book in itself. Eventually, Salas won a boxing scholarship to college, worked at night to support his family, and published a novel to great acclaim (Tatoo the Wicked Cross, 1967). Meanwhile, brother Al grew older and was unchanged, shooting junk, doing penitentiary stints, and, in order to collect welfare cash, having nine children—all of whom became addicts and alcoholics, four of them committing suicide. Salas took several of Al's children under his own wing but in vain. The greatest part—and the heart—of Salas's story are his childhood memories, which are comparable to Neal Cassady's The First Third (1971) but rendered with a far more deftsensitivity and poignancy. Beautifully written, gritty, and deeply human; maybe Salas will return to regular publishing with the debut of this outstanding memoir.