Michelangelo of the Midway

A down-and-out artist and a menacing roustabout clash over a beautiful bareback rider on a Midwestern circus midway during the depths of the Depression, triggering a series of events that will alter their lives forever. The renown artist Thomas Hart Benton, his celebrated murals for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and Babe Ruth's famous "called shot" home run in the 1932 World Series are featured along with colorful supporting characters including a witty prostitute, a cantankerous clown, a plucky young reporter, a greenhorn priest, and the high school flame who complicates the artist's life after betraying him fifteen years earlier in this saga of love, art, arson, banditry, vengeance, and redemption. A must-read for lovers of art and smart historical fiction.