Although much of the attention surrounding this novel comes from its film adaption, Walter Hill's stylized, surreal street gang epic, Sol Yurick's original novel is well worth a read, finally in print after decades!!! While Hill's film was very much an action adventure fest, this novel is a grim tale of how street gangs spawned in the extreme poverty in New York's worst neighborhoods, descriptions of housing project life, urban violence, this isn't a story of heroes and villains like the movie was. Based on Xenophon's Anabasis, this story follows a Coney Island street gang in its miles-long trek across the urban wasteland, just to make it home. A great novel, great movie...can u dig it?....