[William Kennedy, a] lifelong resident of Albany, has shown again how certain talents flourish best in native soil. Ironweed dovetails with its predecessor. The scene is still Albany, the time still 1938. It is Halloween, and Billy Phelan's father Francis is back in his old haunts, meeting ghosts and goblins from his scary past.

Francis is a bum and a lush….

Characters without wills of their own are usually bad bargains in fiction, able to play nothing but victims. But Kennedy shows Francis as both helpless and thoroughly responsible for his own condition. This aging drunk is quite capable of exercising volition; the problem is that his choices are crazed. He has taken on the burden of caring for an aging hobo named Helen Archer. Francis finds her warm places to sleep before looking out for himself. He would like to think of this behavior as virtuous, but honesty...