Publisher's Synopsis
Bread and a Stone is a story of the Great Depression-chronicling the life of an unemployed farmworker, a loving husband and stepfather, who is driven to desperate acts and finds himself accused of murder. Based on true events, the novel stands as a moving example of how individuals of meager means are driven to crime in times of financial hardship.
"With sincerity and deep sympathy Alvah Bessie has told the story of a man to whom life for many years gave not bread but a stone. . . It is the intense, even passionate sympathy with which Mr. Bessie has drawn Ed . . . which gives the novel the power and value it certainly possesses."-New York Times "As an accurate reporter of the underside of American life, it seems to me that Alvah Bessie is to our period what Stephen Crane was to his own."-Saturday Review About the Author: Alvah Cecil Bessie (1904 - 1985) was born in New York City to Jewish parents. After graduating from Columbia University in 1924, he became an actor in Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players. His first novel was Dwell in the Wilderness (1935) and his second book was Men in Battle (1939), a memoir of fighting Franco-led fascists as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Upon his return to New York, Bessie worked as a film and theatre critic for New Masses, and, in 1943, moved to Hollywood, as a contract writer on such films as The Very Thought of You (1944), Hotel Berlin (1945), Objective, Burma! (1945), and Ruthless (1948). In 1947, Bessie was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. His refusal resulted in a year-long sentence for contempt of Congress, making him one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. After his release, Bessie moved to San Francisco and worked as assistant editor of a union paper, a publicist, a book and film reviewer, and a lighting technician at the hungry i nightclub. His later novels include The Symbol (1966) and One For My Baby (1980).