a novel of blowtorch intensity

I edited and brought out a new edition of a relatively unknown novel, Ira Wolfert's Tucker's People. The new edition was published by Illinois with my introduction. When Tucker's People was published in 1943 it was praised by the New York Times: "Wolfert's blowtorch intensity, his subtle shadings of character and meaning, his distinctive and even poetic style and his terrifying clarity of vision lift his first novel bodily above the run of the mill. Tucker's People is an important work." H. G. Wells called it "a great book by a really talented author" when it was published in Great Britain. The book was subsequently translated into many languages, including French, Italian, and Russian. Tucker's People examines the 1930s takeover of the New York City numbers racket by a gangster modeled after the notorious mobster Dutch Schultz. It is "a penetrating, sympathetic novel of frustration and insecurity, a story of little people, many of them decent people, battling against forces they are too feeble to resist and too simple to understand," according to the Saturday Review of Literature. Originally rejected for publication by Little, Brown on the grounds that Wolfert had been branded a Communist, Tucker's People was published only after Angus Cameron, a well-known editor, approached more than twenty publishers in a personal attempt to see the book in print. Within a month of its publication, the book was in its third printing. "Wolfert's blowtorch intensity, his subtle shadings of character and meaning, his distinctive and even poetic style and his terrifying clarity of vision [make] Tucker's People an important work." -- The New York Times