Georgie, Angel of Cell-Block Six

About the Book

In Georgie, Angel of Cell-Block Six, the author recounts the astonishing story of her mother’s little brother, a nine-year-old child in a wheelchair, possessed of an amazing voice. Georgie sang all over St. Louis, at church and at concerts, private gatherings, in salons, and at the Cardinals’ games, where his counter-tenor voice filled the ball park. His success led him to an explosive situation as witness to a shooting in a “lid club” and his eventual role as the sole child whose testimony sent adult criminals to prison. The novel is based not only on the family story but on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s numerous stories and front page photos of Georgie and his unusual fate.

About the Author

Carol O’Brien (Blum) was born in St. Louis; her parents both coming from large Irish families. Although the O’Briens, MCardles, and Braziers led usually unremarkable lives, a few individuals were subject to strange fates. The story of Anne O’Brien was told in Anne’s Head (Dial Press), a well-received historical novel, and Georgie, Angel of Cell-Block Six is based on the account of the author’s mother of the boy’s curious fate, documented with the generous cooperation of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose front page more than once pictured large photos of Georgie. Carol O’Brien Blum, professor of French at Stony Brook University for forty years, has also published a number of works concerning moral questions in eighteenth-century France (Diderot, the Virtue of a Philosopher, Viking Press; Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue, Cornell UP; Strength in Numbers: Population, Reproduction, and Power in Eighteenth-Century France; Johns Hopkins University Press).