One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot
point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated
in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for
thirty-eight years. New Haven native and acclaimed author Nicholas
Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story
of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of
social and economic disparity.
In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait
of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and
gun violence. Tracing the histories of three people whose lives meet in
tragedy--victim Pete Fields, likely murderer Major, and Bobby--Dawidoff
indelibly describes optimistic families coming north from South Carolina
as part of the Great Migration, for the promise of opportunity and
upward mobility, and the harrowing costs of deindustrialization and
neglect. Foremost are the unique challenges confronted by children like
Major and Bobby coming of age in their "forgotten" neighborhood, steps
from Yale University. After years in prison, with the help of a
true-believing lawyer, Bobby is finally set free. His subsequent
struggles with the memories of prison, and his heartbreaking efforts to
reconnect with family and community, exemplify the challenges the
formerly incarcerated face upon reentry into society and, writes
Reginald Dwayne Betts, make this "the best book about the crisis of
incarceration in America."
The Other Side of Prospect is a reportorial tour de force, at once a
sweeping account of how the injustices of racism and inequality
reverberate through the generations, and a beautifully written portrait
of American city life, told through a group of unforgettable people and
their intertwined experiences.
