North Kedzie

About the Book

Stephen Lyman’s Polish uncle, Casmir Pulaski, believed his entire family was part of a select group of people destined as “the sufferers of mankind,” and Stephen’s early youth seems to mirror that tragic portent. He is deserted by his gangster father before birth; loses his mother at age six; his custodial mother soon after; and then his beloved uncle, Casmir “Cash” Pulaski at age fifteen.  

Uncle Cash had journeyed from the small village of Pultusk, Poland, to North Kedzie Street in Chicago with hopes of returning to Poland with his nephew, but Hitler’s invasion and the resulting world war forces him to abandon his plans. After Uncle Cash is killed; Stephen, at age sixteen, and filled with hatred for the “unknown forces” which have robbed him and his uncle of the Pultusk dream, leaves Chicago for Oklahoma City where he becomes involved in a sordid life of sexual and alcohol excess.  

He is recruited into the illegal liquor trade and becomes a “whiskey runner” for Cane Hadley, a charismatic westerner whom Stephen idolizes. Hadley is opposed by a rival gangster named Creason, who orders one of his hoodlums, Corky Callao, to attack Stephen in an effort to start a gang war with Hadley. Stephen is nursed back to health by the beautiful, but married Mexican named Francesca with whom he falls in love.

In retaliation for his beating, and in an effort to assist Cane Hadley, Stephen kidnaps Callao and forces him to burn a warehouse filled with illegal liquor owned by Creason.  Stephen is then forced to flee for his life and for many months he wanders drunkenly through the cities of the south.  

Hitchhiking through Virginia, he finds himself in the small town of Pulaski, which awakens the old memories of his uncle and their dreams of Pultusk. In an attempt to restore his broken life, Stephen joins the Army Airborne. Wounded and decorated in Korea, he is sent to an army hospital for recuperation.  He is attracted to a hospital nurse, as is his best friend. In a fight, his friend is killed and Stephen’s wounds are seriously aggravated. In the resulting court-martial, Stephen is convicted of manslaughter, but because of a diagnosis of a terminal head injury, he is dishonorably discharged, and returns to Chicago, dependent on drugs, and determined to fulfill the last wish of his uncle that the bodies of his uncle and mother be returned to Pultusk, to “sleep under the evergreens” near the Narew River.

At the Mark-Lane Hotel in south Chicago, Stephen finds that the hotel is the center for a prostitution-extortion ring led by the affable mobster, Peter Marcos, and his strikingly beautiful assistant, Lita, who controls the six young girls who have been forced into the racket.  When the gangster discovers Stephen’s drug dependability, he is lured into the loathsome organization, where he becomes both the “sexual sheik” of the captive young women and their only hope for escape.  Marcos then informs him that they are aware of his past; that Creason has joined the western branch of the organization and still searches for the young man who destroyed his illegal liquor business.  Marcos seeks to use that information to further wield Stephen to the Chicago racket.

Stephen is attracted to Lita, with whom he carries on a torrid affair, but he falls deeply in love with one of the new  “recruits;” a shy, mysterious girl named Lee, whom he determines to free from her vicious captors.

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About the Author

At age twelve, Charles W. Byrd began his quest for adventurous knowledge by bicycling twenty-five miles across two mountains to a distant town, enduring a severe thunderstorm while huddling under an abandoned coal truck on a lonely country road; washing the coal dust off in a snake-infested swamp, then emerging with his body covered with loathsome, thick black leeches; and finally, excitedly exploring the busy streets of a strange city. Writing about this escapade in a five-cent Blue Horse notebook ignited a writing career which now includes hundreds of articles; four non-fiction books; and three novels, one of which was adapted for a popular television series and movie. Educated at Berea College, Wake Forest University, The University of North Carolina, and Duke University Divinity School, he and his wife, Mary Nell, have four children; Wanda Jean, Mary Angela, Charla Deni, and Charles Danny.