In the Saint Louis housing projects of the 1940s and 1950s, Wilton Latso is known as a lot of things, but nobody would dare call him a hypocrite. A tough guy with a heart of gold, he may have issues controlling his Irish temper, but he's never broken a promise or turned his back on a friend-even while maintaining the fast-driving and hard-drinking lifestyle of his young adulthood.

And with a wife and four kids by the age of twenty-one and five by age twenty-four, he's constantly struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads any way he can.

But when he isn't...