Third and Indiana is a novel written by Steve Lopez about the experiences of several people connected to 14-year-old Gabriel Santoro, while living in the dangerous gang-controlled streets of the Badlands section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The novel gave notoriety to Third Street and Indiana Avenue, a real-life intersection in the Fairhill area known for the prevalence of drug dealers. The first printing had 50,000 copies printed. Published in 1994, it was Lopez's first novel.
Development
Steve Lopez arrived in Philadelphia in the mid-1980s. Lopez said that he began considering writing a novel because "what I saw in the neighborhood that I found so shocking and so unlike what I had seen in my years of reporting in other cities. There were just so many compelling images that I would walk away with every time I went into the neighborhood." Lopez said that the novel was, as paraphrased by Douglas J. Keating of the Philadelphia Inquirer, "essentially the story of a parent in search of a child in danger." Lopez said that his book mainly focused on "adult relationships".