Christ in Concrete

On Good Friday, a building under construction collapses and kills Geremio, an Italian immigrant bricklayer, leaving his pregnant wife Annunziata and their eight children in poverty. His twelve-year-old son Paul takes up his father's trade to support the family, entering the dangerous world of construction where the work itself, personified as "Job," terrorizes the men who depend on it. Di Donato traces Paul's forced passage into manhood, his crisis of faith, and his mother's fierce devotion, drawing on his own boyhood after his father died in a real construction accident. The novel is a lyrical, grief-shaped portrait of immigrant labor and family love.