After a long stretch of infertility, she is finally pregnant. Jen, who is white, is married to Kevin, a police officer involved in the shooting. Even though their lives have taken different paths, they remain besties. The incident also forces a reckoning between Jen and Riley, two women who have been lifelong friends. More than one family suffers the consequences of a trigger pulled too soon, with recriminations, threats, and a sense of inevitability: “The fervor and outrage is familiar, a well-oiled machine,” one character observes. He worries about how his mother will cope.Īn outpouring of grief ensues in the community. Imagined this scenario already, something Black children learn to fear? He wishes the cops-both white-had known there was no gun he was reaching for his cell phone that now lies shattered on the pavement. As he lies wounded on the street, 14-year-old Justin Dwyer ruminates about the sensation of being shot. Familiar fervorĪuthors Pride and Piazza set the tone in the gripping prologue. With the city’s 500th homicide of 2021 recorded just days ago and unjustified murders disproportionately targeting Black and brown people splashed on every news outlet, this story is sadly familiar. Fiction blurs with reality in this novel, perhaps most acutely for us Philadelphians aware of the city’s grim statistics of gun violence.
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