Remembering Gage Park

"Remembering Gage Park is a fictional memoir as told by protagonist Mike Staron. It is about his family and his Chicago neighborhood. It is about his friendship with Jim Connor that begins with their common interest in basketball.
The time period is the 1950s to the 1970s when they are coming of age and having to deal with the problems of the day which include racial relations and being young men of draft age during the Vietnam War.
Gage Park is an all-white, blue-collar ethnic neighborhood next to an overcrowded African American neighborhood. Therein lies the seeds of racial conflict.
Jim goes off to war and returns physically and mentally injured. The friendship continues on into adulthood until Jim’s death."