Mike Spector

Soulville Mike Spector

The night ?Battling? Moish Moskowitz beat "Midget" Rosenberg at the old Ice Palace on Market Street, Moish viewed success as a simple equation; you didn?t have to be smart or good looking, you just needed to know how to make people laugh or how to fight. That was in 1933. Forty-one years later life had gotten complicated. The reign of Jewish champions was over. Moish still spent every day in the gym training a group of fighters including Tyrone Braxton. There's a line between Blacks and Jews that is seldom successfully juggled and never crossed. For Moish, it was like that line didn't exist. Set in Philadelphia, 1974, the hype, hopes, fears and dreams of Moish, Tyrone, and a cast of street characters known as the Boardroom play out across a landscape of smoky arenas, sweaty boxing gyms, early morning breakfasts at Murray's Delicatessen and late night drinks at Loretta's High Hat Lounge. Crossing generational, ethnic, and racial lines with authenticity and a total disregard for political correctness, Soulville is a gritty, funny, novel whose appeal will cross as many lines as the characters themselves do.