"The year it was, even, had a lovely ring to it. Nineteen fifty-two. The war and all, it was over. Things were going to get better and better." In the Union Square neighborhood of southwest Baltimore, 1952 will in fact mark the beginning of what will come to be known as The Great Decline. Grand three-story row houses, old money and stature frame the setting for descendants of European immigrants and slaves who exist side-by-side.

But in a community already marked by violence, alcoholism, and lurking poverty, young Irish boxer Paddy Dolan personifies the shadow that lies over much of a city where religious tensions, racial hatred, and sexual violence work to make monsters.

A tale of damnation and redemption, the sacred and the profane, Union Square is also a story of deep humor and characters who will not soon be forgotten.