Edgewater Angels.

• Author: Bernstein, Dennis
• Position: Brief Article

Edgewater Angels by Sandro Meallet Doubleday. 324 pages. $20.00.

There are multiple fault lines running though Los Angeles. One kind of fault line--poverty--rocks tens of thousands of very poor Angelinos every day. Hunger, rat infestations, the slow-motion bullets from lead paint poisonings, and the fast-action charges from automatic weapons--fired by cops and gang-bangers--often make life treacherous and childhood short-lived.

Writer Sandro Meallet grew up on poverty's fault line, inside L.A.'s...