The Little Champ: A Different Kind of Novel

This is a work of fiction based on true events, in the form of an autobiography that might have been written, but never was. Abe Washington, a former world's champion featherweight boxer, tells us how he rose from a poor Jewish immigrant neighborhood in San Francisco to become one of the greatest, most acclaimed prizefighters in history. When he falls in with gangsters and becomes implicated in fixing the 1919 World Series of baseball, the Black Sox series, he escapes prosecution, but his reputation is destroyed, and he lives in disgrace for the remaining half-century of his life. In his dying days, seeking redemption, he dictates this account of his life, along the way providing the reader with raw accounts of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, the rough-and-tumble era of early twentieth century prizefighting, and the Jazz Age and Prohibition.