ARTS&LIFE BOOK REVIEW
Savage City, by Donald Levin (Poison Toe Press: Ferndale), 2021
T
he era of 1930s Detroit was a period of extreme upheaval. The Great Depression, the worst economic disaster in American history, reigned for the entire decade. Heavily dependent upon automobile manufacturing, Detroit felt the ravages of the Depression more deeply than any other major city. Severe economic distress, however, was just one of Mike Smith many serious issues facing Alene and Graham Landau Detroiters: there were also Archivist Chair dangerous threats from crime and racketeering; civic corruption; white supremacy movements; rampant antisemitism and racial prejudice; and pitched battles between corporate powers and labor organizations. As the title of Donald Levin’s new novel suggests, Detroit was a Savage City. Recently released, Savage City is a historical novel about Detroit during the Great Depression. Best known for his seven Martin Preuss mysteries, Levin takes a deep dive into the noir side of the city by focusing on the lives of four main characters during a critical week in 1932 and a pivotal event: the Ford Hunger March.
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MARCH 17 • 2022
The novel begins with Clarence Brown, a migrant from the American South and one of only a few Black police officers in Detroit. He is also a detective, which makes him an even rarer commodity on the force. Brown is an honorable man who faces racial prejudice and slights every day of his working life, both from within the police department and without. In his part of the story, Brown faces many obstacles while trying to solve the lynching of an African American man that most of police force is willing to falsely declare a suicide. Prohibition is still in effect and the distribution of illegal booze is a profitable enterprise in 1932. Although its power was on the wane, the most famous set of Detroit racketeers was the Purple Gang. Its founders and leaders were young Jewish men. Another of Levin’s characters, Ben Rubin, is a petty thief who dreams of joining the gang, but instead, becomes a target of the “Purples.” Rubin is not a bad guy, but he sees crime as a career path out of poverty until he meets Elizabeth Waters. The scale of poverty in the United States during the Depression was unprecedented and the federal government did not seem
to have any solutions to the problem. To many, it also seemed uncaring. As a result, many citizens began to consider alternative political ideologies such as communism, socialism and other “isms.” Elizabeth Waters is just such a person. Renouncing the security of her Grosse Pointe upbringing, Waters supports the communist-initiated Unemployment Councils. She’s a free spirit, an idealist, but after participating in the Hunger March, Waters finds herself jailed and abused by cops. Ben Rubin is also a victim of the Hunger March, and a bond develops between them. The Ford Hunger March was an actual event that occurred on March 7, 1932. In protest over the lack of jobs, unemployed workers marched from the western Detroit border to Ford Motor Company’s giant River Rouge Industrial complex in Dearborn. There, they were met by police, Ford Service Department thugs led by Ford’s famous thug-in-chief, Harry Bennett, and by bullets. At the end of the clash, four marchers were dead (one died a few days later) and dozens were beaten and injured. Levin uses the Hunger March as a backdrop. Finally, there is Roscoe Grissom. Grissom
