Ironweed

By 1938, Francis Phelan, whose gift of gab has always broken his fall, is a stumblebum, sleeping in missions and hobo jungles, and picking up day labor as a gravedigger, an occupation that draws him back to an Albany frozen in memory.

For he is a murderer. But, as Saul Bellow has commented, "Francis is also a traditional champion, the fated man, a type out of Icelandic or Irish epic. To kill is his destiny, and he hills American style, with techniques learned in play, throwing a rock like a baseball and, again in Hooverville, hitting a man with a baseball bat. He considers himself a man of sin."

So Francis and Helen, his faithful co-conspirator n survival, shuffle their ragtag way along the wetly shimmering streets of their big little town. Destiny is not their business.