"Christ in Concrete takes place on the Lower East Side of New York City shortly before the Great Depression and portrays people rarely seen in American literature - the hardworking Italian immigrants who joined the construction trade and lived in the tenements near the waterfront." Largely autobiographical, Christ in Concrete opens with the dramatic Good Friday collapse of a building under construction, which buries in its rubble the bricklayers working on the upper floors and literally crucifies in concrete Geremio, whose death leaves his pregnant wife and eight children impoverished. His bright, studious oldest son, Paul, at just twelve years of age, must take over his father's role - and job.