Money Rock: A Family’S Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the new South (in English)
Synopsis "Money Rock: A Family’S Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the new South (in English)"
“This book would pair well with Richard Rothsteins The Color of Law. . . . Incisive. . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)“Kelley could have written a fine book about Charlottes drug trade in the 80s and 90s, filled with shoot-outs and flashy jewelry. What she accomplishes with Money Rock, however, is far more laudable.”—Charlotte Magazine“Pam Kelley knows a good story when she sees oneand Money Rock is a hell of a story. . . like a New South version of The Wire.”—Shelf Awareness Meet Money Rockyoung, charismatic, and Charlottes flashiest coke dealerin a riveting social history with echoes of Ghettoside and Random Family Meet Money Rock. He’s young. He’s charismatic. He’s generous, often to a fault. He’s one of Charlotte’s most successful cocaine dealers, and that’s what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history—by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic—of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. The saga begins in 1963 when a budding civil rights activist named Carrie gives birth to Belton Lamont Platt, eventually known as Money Rock, in a newly integrated North Carolina hospital. Pam Kelley takes readers through a shootout that shocks the city, a botched FBI sting, and a trial with a judge known as “Maximum Bob.” When the story concludes more than a half century later, Belton has redeemed himself. But three of his sons have met violent deaths and his oldest, fresh from prison, struggles to make a new life in a world where the odds are stacked against him. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies—racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration—help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.
