The writer John O'Hara (1905-1970) came from Pottsville in Pennsylvania. He put his home town and the surrounding vicinity under a microscope to produce an account of 'The Anthracite Region' that rivals Edith Wharton's descriptions of New York and Sinclair Lewis's anatomy of Sauk Centre. With the discerning eye of a local resident, O'Hara recreated this coal-rich region and its people so well that his novelettes, novellas, novels, plays and short stories give a true record of his 'Pennsylvania Protectorate' in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. In order to reveal the ethnographical, geographical and historical authenticity of the O'Hara Canon, this book examines his writings in the context of Pottsville and the borough of Tamaqua, as well as the nearby towns and villages. The author also investigates both O'Hara's genteel upbringing and his gangster stratum. The book explores the many dimensions of O'Hara's life from the time of his birth until his escape to New York City in 1928. New sources such as unpublished letters and interviews with O'Hara's family, friends and enemies provide important insights into O'Hara, as well as into Pottsville and the surrounding region.

Serial killer H.H. Holmes built his murder castle in Chicago, but he met the hangman in Philadelphia. Al Capone served his first prison sentence here. The real-life killers who inspired HBO’s Boardwalk Empire lived and died here. America’s first bank robbery was pulled off here in 1798. The country’s first kidnapping for ransom came off without a hitch in 1874. A South Philadelphia man hatched the largest mass murder plot in U.S. history in the 1930s. His partners in crime were unhappy housewives. Catholics and Protestants aimed cannon at each other in city streets in 1844. Civil rights hero Octavius V. Catto was gunned down on South Street in 1871. Take a walk with us through city history. Would you pass Eastern State Penitentiary on April 3, 1945, just as famed bank robber Willie Sutton popped out of an escape tunnel in broad daylight? Or you might have been one of the invited guests at H.H. Holmes’ hanging at Moyamensing Prison on a gray morning in May 1896. It still ranks as one of the most bizarre executions in city history. Or, if you walked down Washington Lane on July 1, 1874, would you have been alert enough to stop the two men who lured little blond Charley Ross away with candy? You might have stopped America’s first kidnapping for ransom, the one that gave rise to the admonition, “Never take candy from a stranger.” The case inspired the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping. Then there was the bank robber whose funeral drew thousands of spectators and the burglary defendant so alluring that conversation would stop whenever she entered the courtroom. Mix in murderous maids, bumbling burglars, and unflinching local heroes and you have True Crime Philadelphia.

The definitive biography of short story writer John O’Hara.