The Rat That Got Away is an inspiring story of one man's odyssey from
the streets of the Bronx to a life as a professional athlete and banker
in Europe, but it is also provides a unique vantage point on the history
of the Bronx and sheds new light on a neglected period in American urban
history.
Allen Jones grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx at a
time--the 1950s--when that neighborhood was a place of optimism and hope
for upwardly mobile Black and Latino families. Brought up in a
two-parent household, with many neighborhood mentors, Jones led an
almost charmed life as a budding basketball star until his teen years,
when his once peaceful neighborhood was torn by job losses, white
flight, and a crippling drug epidemic. Drawn into the heroin trade,
first as a user, then as a dealer, Jones spent four months on Rikers
Island, where he experienced a crisis of conscience and a determination
to turn his life around. Sent to a New England prep school upon his
release, Jones used his basketball skills and street smarts
to forge a life outside the Bronx, first as a college athlete in the
South, then as a professional basketball player, radio personality, and
banker in Europe.
A brilliant storyteller with a gift for dialogue, Jones brings Bronx
streets and housing projects to life as places of possibility as well as
tragedy, where racism and economic hardship never completely suppressed
the resilient spirit of its residents. A book that will change the way
people view the South Bronx.
