"It was juggling that had got me where I was . . . . I practiced my juggling. I juggled anything, Spaldeens, stones, oranges, empty green Coca-Cola bottles, I juggled rolls we stole hot from the bins in the Pechter Bakery wagons, and since I juggled so constantly nobody bothered me about it except once in a while just because it was something nobody else could do, to try to interrupt my rhythm by giving me a shove, or to grab one of my oranges out of the air and run with it, because it was what I was known to do, along the lines of having a nervous tic, something that marked me but after all wasn't my fault."

So speaks the title character and narrator of E. L. Doctorow's novel Billy Bathgate, hailed by Anne Tyler as "a wonderful new addition to the ranks of American boy heroes" in The...