This book joins three works by Will Eisner, all set around Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx (New York).
(1) Contract with God (1978), comprising four independent brief stories.
(2) A Life Force (1988), which follows events in Dropsie Avenue during the Great Depression years, and
(3) Dropsie Avenue (1995), where the story follows the neighborhood from the 1800s (farming community) to high-end suburb, its decline to a tenement community, the total breakdown and final rebuilding in the 1990s.