My willing suspension of disbelief just kept slipping away while reading this book. I found the contemporary speech patterns of the main character to very annoying. In order for me to continue reading I had to move it out of 1932. Beyond that, I could not believe that a guy about to graduate from Cornell would walk out of the final and join a circus. Nope, not even dead parents would make anyone do that.

The melodrama at the end, beaten to a pulp and jumping from train to train while its moving - just too hard to believe. The only thing in the book that I could believe was that none of his children or grandchildren wanted to move the Jacob out of the nursing home and into their care.