Working for one of his uncle's drug houses in South Central L.A., East takes his 12-hour shifts of watching the street and managing the drug users with a level of seriousness and perspicacity that would make him the envy of any fresh MBA. When the cops raid and begin to unravel the organization with arrests, East's house shuts down. Instead of receiving a bullet to the brain as he's expecting, 15-year-old East is sent by his uncle beyond the neighborhood he's always known to the wilds of Wisconsin as one of an unlikely team of urban boy soldiers on a mission to take out a judge who poses a danger to boss Fin. The characterizations of East and those who accompany him are masterly. Beverly presents an unflinching third-person glimpse through the jaded eyes of East at college wheeler-dealer Michael, physically flabby but mentally sharp Walter, and Ty, East's younger and frighteningly volatile trigger man and half brother. The protagonist has seen so much darkness and crime that the naïveté he conveys is miraculous. This man-boy from the mean streets is still able to experience watershed moments that open his eyes to a world and people beyond his ken and his kin. His rites of passage are atypical compared with many other antiheroes; in some ways, he washes clean rather than becoming dirtied by the world at large.
VERDICT At once gritty and literary, this novel is sure to please YA readers, who, like East, know—or seek to know—more about life than is sometimes comfortable.
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