Brick City is a novel that tells the hopes and dreams of Ginger, a forty-three-year-old single mother of three teenaged children: nineteen-year-old son, Ralph; sixteen-year-old daughter, Susan; and fourteen-year-old daughter, Helen. In spite of Ginger's dubious past, she was able to eke out a fair living for her children. Things were going well in her household until Nick, a one-time gangster, was released from prison and arrived to collect an old debt from a longtime friend. His method of collecting left Ginger's hopes and dreams shattered and the little community of Brick City devastated.