"Mr. Ward writes with a directness and sincerity that is increasingly rare in these days of fashionable irony and high-tech literary pyrotechnics...The reader...really does want to know what happens." -Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"A truly awesome achievement, a paean of power and intensity directed toward a too often forgotten group, those American refugees so cruelly displaced by the raw greed and economic convulsions in the heavy steel industry. Red Baker is a remarkable novel." -James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss

"They may not build 'em like they used to, but Red Baker is a product that any working fella can damn well be proud of." -Time

It is winter 1983. In Baltimore, Larmel Steel lays off 60 percent of its work force, and forty-year-old Red Baker, who has spent his entire life in his close-knit blue-collar neighborhood, goes a little crazy. He boozes a lot, nearly loses his wife, hits rock bottom -- but comes back fighting, with the full force of his wild energy and his redeeming capacity for loyalty and love.

With Red Baker, his fourth novel, Robert Ward has ventured into territory uncharted by most contemporary American fiction writers -- the world of men who grew up together, played ball together, followed their fathers into high-paying jobs at the steel mill -- and are then left high and dry as they enter middle age, with no identity to replace the one they lost. The novel is filled with unforgettable characters -- Red's angry but loyal wife, Wanda; his adored basketball-player son, Ace; his lifelong friend, Dog, a casualty of the layoff; and Crystal, the go-go dancer at Lily's bar who embodies Red's fantasy of escape.