http://american-rattlesnake.org/2011/05 ... n-america/

Documenting the lives of immigrants is an enduring aspect of American literature, which befits a nation that has been shaped to such a large extent by successive waves of migration from distant lands. One of the most important novels published in the first half of the 20th century, Christ in Concrete, was written by the son of Italian immigrants who sought to portray the plight of his community by fictionalizing the story of his and his parents’ lives.

The book’s protagonist, Paul, is loosely modeled on Pietro Donato, whose father was crushed to death as he was working on a construction site. In the novel, Paul is compelled to curtail his education and become an apprentice brick layer at the callow age of 12 in order to support his large, Italian-American family. The figure of Paul’s deceased father Geremio casts a pall over the entire work, especially after the death of his caretaker/godfather, a man by the name of Nazone, who serves as both a mentor and protege of Paul as the novel progresses.

While Christ in Concrete revolves around the daily struggles of these Italian immigrants, as well as a Russian-Jewish family that Paul develops a friendship with over time, and the ethnic community in which they reside, the focus of the author seems to encompass a much broader, almost universal critique of what he viewed as the inherent deficiencies of both American capitalism and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, this novel is replete with religious imagery and symbolism. From the protagonist-who’s the namesake of Paul the Apostle-to the repeated invocations of God during times of misfortune, e.g. Anunziata’s pleas for mercy after the death of her husband, Geremio, Christ in Concrete is a biblical allegory, albeit not in the traditional sense.