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The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America’s Dilemma

Amazon.com Price:  $7.68 (as of 19/04/2019 23:39 PST- Details)

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Description

Bestselling creator Alex Kotlowitz is one of this country’s foremost writers on the ever explosive issue of race. In this gripping and in the end profound book, Kotlowitz takes us to two towns in southern Michigan, St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, separated by the St. Joseph River. Geographically close, but worlds apart, they’re a living metaphor for The us’s racial divisions: St. Joseph is a prosperous lakeshore community and ninety-five percent white, whilst Benton Harbor is impoverished and ninety-two percent black. When the body of a black teenaged boy from Benton Harbor is found in the river, unhealed wounds and suspicions between the two towns’ populations surface as well. The investigation into the young man’s death becomes, inevitably, a screen on which every town projects their resentments and fears. The Other Side of the River sensitively portrays the lives and hopes of the towns’ citizens as they wrestle with this mystery–and reveals the attitudes and misperceptions that undermine race relations all through The us.
The creator of There Are No Children Here follows up that magnificent effort with the gripping story of a mysterious death in southwest Michigan. A black teenager surfaces in the St. Joseph River, drowned. How did he get there? The towns of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, divided by both race and the river, grapple with the possibilities in this maddeningly difficult case. Alex Kotlowitz puts his sharp reporting skills to good work here, describing in detail the whole thing that may be known about Eric McGinnis’s short life and untimely death. But the book is best at plumbing the racial psychology of these mutually suspicious communities. The Other Side of the River has that can’t-put-it-down quality found in the most productive narrative nonfiction, and it speaks to issues affecting all of The us.

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