On a steamy summer day in 1920, as the blood-red sun sets over New York's Hudson River, the leaders of two rival gangs from the Irish and Jewish ghettos slug it out on the Fulton Street docks. That day, Tony McGrath and Mike Roth fight to a bloody draw-- the first of many battles that will propel them from the streets to the world heavyweight championship ring and beyond, into the cutthroat political arena of megalopolitan power-brokering.
Skyline is a panoramic story about the building of modern Manhattan and the men who shaped its growth. In this sweeping novel we follow the loves, lives and family quarrels, the victories, fears and dreams of Mike and Tony from their brawling adolescence to their maturity as movers and shakers of the greatest city on earth.
"From New York politics and the championship ring to Los Angeles glitter and the birth of color television, Milton shows the shaping of a nation through the lives of two powerful men. It's a knock-out!" Dana Murduck, Ashville Citizen-Times
"I love any novel that calls itself a 'panorama' and even sometimes really is. Skyline is wonderful reading-- a real escape. Milton mixes real people (Jimmy Walker, Fiorella LaGuardia, Joe Louis, Louis B Mayer and Bugsy Segal) with a unique cast of fictional characters. Tony McGrath and Mike Roth are young leaders of rival Irish and Jewish gangs in New York in the early 1920's. Skyline chronicles the growth of New York along with their families. Both become involved in heavyweight boxing championships, business and politics. I knew the story was unlikely, but I became too involved in the excitement to care. The magic of this book is that you care deeply about the people and their lives. Skyline is one of the few novels that deserves the praise on its cover." Judy Kwell, Roanoke Times
This book was a grave disappointment for me. It began as a project in conjunction with a film studio, 20th Century Fox and a producer. In the early eighties, the studios decided to develop their own properties and because I had been a screenwriter as well as a novelist I was brought in to present some ideas to them. "Skyline" caught their fancy, the studio was enthusiastic, Putnams liked it, and we were in business. I received the largest advance I had ever had. Until this time I had been a respected, if mid-list novelist. Suddenly it seemed my career was about to skyrocket. Beguiled with visions of a best-seller epic, a major film, perhaps the cover of Time Magazine, I was ready to take my literary place next to E.L. Doctorow and "Ragtime". What was it Bobby Burns said? The best laid plans, etc.? The book-film, studio-author, bubble burst before "Skyline" made it to the book stores. Several of the projects, which had made the writers millionaires, bombed. The "Skyline" film and talk of a mini-series evaporated. I had made a nice chunk of geetus, but that was it. The studio dropped the project, the publishers backed off any major promotion, and I slunk back to my humble niche in the world of letters, a respected, literary lumpen, back to the mid-list quagmire. I bought myself a ranch in the Southern Sierra and have been plugging along up here ever since, writing as well as I can, writing with passion and enthusiasm, turning out the best novels I'm capable of.