The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's DilemmaPaperback, 19 January 1999

Seperated by the St.Joseph River, St.Joseph and Benton HArbor are two Michigan towns that are geographically close, yet in every sense worlds apart. St.Joseph is a prosperous lakeshore community, 95 percent white, while Benton HArbor is impoverished and 92 percent black. When the body of Eric McGinnis, a black teenage boy from Benton Harbor, is found in the river, relations between the two communities grow increasingly strained as long hels misperceptions and attitudes surface. As Family, friends, and the police struggle to find out how and why McGinnis died, Alex Kotlowitz uncovers layers of both evidence and opinion, and demonstrates that in many ways, the truth is shaped by which side of the river you call home.

Thoughtful and affecting, "The Other Side of the River" proves once again that Alex Kotlowitz is one of our foremost writers on the ever--explosive issue of race. In an afterword to this Anchor edition, Kotlowitz discusses the reaction to the book in the communities it deals with.