Brick City is a novel that tells the hopes and dreams of Ginger, a forty-three-year-old single mother of three teenaged children; a nineteen-year-old son Ralph, sixteen-year-old daughter Susan, and fourteen-year-old daughter Helen. In spite of Gingeras 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 long-time friend. His method of collecting left Gingeras hopes and dreams shattered and the little community of Brick City devastated.