There have been stunning books about black ghetto life, but Richard Price's The Wanderers finds its own place among the chronicles of urban turmoil by focusing on a white community, one step up from the black ghetto, in housing projects on the outskirts of the bourgeois dream. These are the children of blue-collar workers who with no stigma attached to their skin, no "heritage" of slavery, still find themselves excluded from America's abundant table.

The backbeat of rock'n roll pounds behind the cunning descriptions of family battles, the ferocious territorial feuds between gangs, and the make-out sessions. Rock'n roll promises action and joy in a world that offers little chance of change or happiness. The gang takes its name from the song "The Wanderer" by Dion and the Belmonts:

          I roam from town to town
          I go through life without a care….

As the desperation in the gang's...