Sunday Story Ratings #28: Fruit Tramp

[aesmael]

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Fruit Tramp by Daniel Mainwaring

Originally published July 1934 in Harper's; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

 

M

(D, V, L)

Drug references (PG) {Suggestion someone's sons may have been smoking; Cigarette-rolling + smoking}

Violence (M) {Sibling tussling; people showing up with black eyes; a brawl}

Mild Coarse Language (PG)

 

Representations

Gender:

Predominantly male characters, only men move the plot.

Sex:

No direct sexuality, families presented only in monogamous heterosexual format.

Race & Ethnicity:

One off-screen character possibly Japanese (based on being consistently referred to by the narrator as "the Jap"). Anti-Russian / communist sentiment as a trouble-stirrer. Everyone else unmarked US-dweller.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Typhoid fever mentioned as a thing that happens. One character who incites trouble described as a hunchback.

 

 

Notes

This one didn't feel like a crime story at all. I suppose the violence at the end is against the law... perhaps it does count. The story is about, so far as I can tell, the crushing circumstances of the Great Depression in the US pitting people against each other.