Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Wed Nov 30 00:00:00 CST 2022)

Journalist Rubinstein tells the haunting story of a former gang member who tried to go straight and ran into a skein of political, philanthropic, and law enforcement interests.When Ernestine Boyd, a grandchild of slaves, fled to Denver from the Jim Crow South, she became one of the first Black residents of the Northeast Park Hill part of the city, which included the Holly, a neighborhood that would earn a reputation as "the proud center of the city's civil rights movement." Decades later, Boyd's grandson Terrance Roberts left his own mark on the Holly. He had found God and quit the Bloods while in prison; after his release, he founded an anti-gang nonprofit that led the mayor to name him "one of Denver's 150 Unsung Heroes." Roberts' standing in the city began to unravel when, at a rally marking the opening of a Boys & Girls Club in the Holly, he shot a member of the Bloods who had credibly threatened him. In a multigenerational saga that builds toward a suspenseful courtroom drama centered on Roberts' trial for assault and attempted murder, Rubinstein-who grew up and still resides in Denver-creates a historical palimpsest that sets its events against the backdrop of broad social and political changes, including the Crips' and Bloods' spread from Los Angeles to Denver; the Clinton administration's decision to treat street gangs as "organized crime" groups; and the often clashing aims of politicians, philanthropists, and Black leaders. The author offers especially sharp and well-developed scrutiny of the use of active gang members as confidential police informants, but this important book is about more than dubious policing. A larger theme is how difficult it is for gang members to go straight while their former partners in crime still have the power to harm them, the problem a Denver activist chillingly summed up in a Chinese proverb: "He who mounts the tiger can never get off."A true-crime tale vividly portrays a Denver hidden by picturesque vistas of its snow-capped mountains.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

Journalist Rubinstein tells the haunting story of a former gang member who tried to go straight and ran into a skein of political, philanthropic, and law enforcement interests.When Ernestine Boyd, a grandchild of slaves, fled to Denver from the Jim Crow South, she became one of the first Black residents of the Northeast Park Hill part of the city, which included the Holly, a neighborhood that would earn a reputation as "the proud center of the city's civil rights movement." Decades later, Boyd's grandson Terrance Roberts left his own mark on the Holly. He had found God and quit the Bloods while in prison; after his release, he founded an anti-gang nonprofit that led the mayor to name him "one of Denver's 150 Unsung Heroes." Roberts' standing in the city began to unravel when, at a rally marking the opening of a Boys & Girls Club in the Holly, he shot a member of the Bloods who had credibly threatened him. In a multigenerational saga that builds toward a suspenseful courtroom drama centered on Roberts' trial for assault and attempted murder, Rubinstein-who grew up and still resides in Denver-creates a historical palimpsest that sets its events against the backdrop of broad social and political changes, including the Crips' and Bloods' spread from Los Angeles to Denver; the Clinton administration's decision to treat street gangs as "organized crime" groups; and the often clashing aims of politicians, philanthropists, and Black leaders. The author offers especially sharp and well-developed scrutiny of the use of active gang members as confidential police informants, but this important book is about more than dubious policing. A larger theme is how difficult it is for gang members to go straight while their former partners in crime still have the power to harm them, the problem a Denver activist chillingly summed up in a Chinese proverb: "He who mounts the tiger can never get off."A true-crime tale vividly portrays a Denver hidden by picturesque vistas of its snow-capped mountains.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Journalist Rubinstein follows Ballad of the Whiskey Robber with an engrossing investigation into why Terrance Roberts, a gangbanger turned community activist in northeast Denver, shot someone at his own peace rally in 2013. To answer the question, Rubinstein chronicles 50 years of civil rights activism, racialized poverty, drug crime, gang conflict, and urban redevelopment in the Holly, a Denver neighborhood that takes its name from a local shopping center where the police shooting of an unarmed teenager in 1968 touched off waves of racial unrest. After joining the Park Hill Bloods as a teenager, Roberts spent several years in and out of jail before a religious conversion inspired him to become a gang prevention advocate and a leader in efforts to redevelop the shopping center, which had become an open-air drug market in the 1980s and was burned down by Crips in 2008. Rubinstein contends that undercover law-enforcement activities, including the overuse of still-active gang members as informants, stoked intra-gang violence and helped create the combative circumstances that led Roberts to shoot a Bloods enforcer in self-defense. Though Rubinstein is clearly on Roberts-s side, he bolsters the book-s veracity with expert sociological and historical context. This vivid story of redemption and loss offers profound insights into the forces that plague America-s inner cities. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (May)