"Bum Town is Tony Fitzpatrick's allegorical tale of a journey through Chicago with the ghost of his father - revisiting the places that have changed, remembering the uncle who died as a boy trying to hop a freight during the Great Depression, praising and dispraising a city of dreams and despair.".

"Bum Town is not only a poem, but also a collection of beautifully reproduced etchings and drawings by the author, filled with Fitzpatrick's celebrated symbols of work and fantasy, fear and hope, which have been exhibited across the United States and around the world. Tony Fitzpatrick knows Chicago from the inside out and from the bottom up, and he tells us what he knows, with both images and words."--BOOK JACKET.