What Work Is

This collection amounts to praise for all the workers of America. These heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin's First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. But Levine's characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs.