It’s the mid-eighties in East Harlem: a twelve-year-old black boy’s murdered body is found by Mathilda “Twin” Johnson, an unlikely hero who is both the neighborhood’s troublemaker and its conscience. When she breaks a cardinal rule–“don’t call the cops”–her decision ensnares a community and brings unmanageable grief to a mother. Anita, a postal worker and army widow, is determined to solve her son’s Tyrone’s murder, and her quest galvanizes the neighborhood, which is itself a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and latch-key kids. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice & no prospects, and Anita’s opinionated friend Wanda, whose truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis. Everyone is struggling. Anita, Wanda and Twin, the triad of this vibrant novel, are drawn into the neighborhood drug trap, while a singer, a preacher, and the church ladies who follow him believe their dreams can shape a city. Will the three be able to break away from crack’s dangerous allure? Will the reverend’s pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone’s killer yield answers? Will justice come to East Harlem?
