A Stone For Danny Fisher is a serious early novel by Harold Robbins that looks at the effect of the Great Depression on a lower-middle class Jewish family.

[1] Within a few years, however, the Great Depression begins and Danny must use his one talent, boxing, as a means of supporting his family.

Danny continues to box, much against his father's wish, and dates a young Italian Catholic woman, Nellie Petito, much to the chagrin of his mother.

Danny's boxing skills attract the attention of hoodlums, and he is offered a large sum of money to lose the Golden Gloves championship, a fight he could win easily and which would bring him professional fame as well as, he hopes, his father's acceptance.

The movie version hones in on the tension between the father, a cold[citation needed], withdrawn figure and barely successful pharmacy employee and his son, a rebellious teenager whose failures in high school are largely a passive-aggressive response to his father, masking the need for the patriarch's approval.