Father Divine’s Bikes by Steve Bassett

FATHER DIVINE'S BIKES is a 2020 BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD FINALIST for Book in a Series, as well as Solo Medal Winner New Apple Literary Award for E-Book General Fiction, Finalist International Book Awards (American Book Fest) in Genre Fiction, and Finalist Best Book Awards (American Book Fest) in General Fiction. The novel exposes the dark underbelly of 1945 Newark, New Jersey; a city that boomed during World War II but finds itself unable to cope with the peace that brings joblessness, despair and crime. As deeply-entrenched white enclaves are squeezed by the mass migration of blacks, escape routes for poor ethnic whites rapidly close. Two Catholic altar boys living in a world ripe for grifters, like Father Divine, soon learn that his promise of heaven on earth has hellish consequences.

In the autumn of 1945, a battle erupts when the city's competing mobs end their truce. When it gets bloody, other criminal forces poise to move in. Black bookies, using Father Divine's controversial International Peace Mission Movement as a front, recruit Joey Bancik and Richie Maxwell to run numbers under the guise of newspaper routes.

The boys' families welcome the few bucks they can put on the table. Meanwhile, their parish priest and two homicide detectives fear the numbers racket will entrap the boys in a world of crime.

Turf wars, murders, and a corrupt police department in bed with the mob form a dark and gritty backdrop against a story of post-war Newark and the violence that permeated it.