En una calurosa tarde de verano de 1972, tres adolescentes en un vecindario desconocido y seis vidas cambiaron para siempre. Treinta y cinco años después, un sobreviviente de ese día se acerca a otro, abriendo una puerta que podría conducir a la salvación. Pero otro sobreviviente ahora está fuera de prisión, buscando reparación en cualquier forma que pueda encontrar.

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12852779

Great writer... this is a book about redemption. ( )

“The Turnaround” is a 2008 novel by George Pelecanos. On the surface, it bears quite a few similarities to his earlier novel, “Hard Revolution.” As in “Hard Revolution,” the book is about two different eras, beginning with two groups of teenagers in the sixties, one group Black, one group White, and an incident that tears their lives apart, some ending up wounded or dead, some ending up in prison, and some running away from their past. The book then picks up these different groups thirty years later, some of the teenagers have become successful as professionals or small businessmen and some have let the system tear them up. They are all scarred by their past, some literally and some deep in their souls. Their paths cross again, some of them for the better, but some for worse. They bear guilt and anxiety for what happened and their roles in it. Where they just dumb kids acting out or something worse? Can they forgive each other for what happened? Can they move on from it finally? What do they owe each other for what happened? Is that debt payable in blood or money?

Pelecanos writes classics that are not just crime novels, but are great character studies and he takes the reader on a journey to different eras, framing and establishing those eras by the cars the men drive and the music they listen to on the radio. There is a driving beat for each era and Pelecanos finds it. Like most of his books, “The Turnaround” takes place in the neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Few of us living outside the district think about it as a city outside the political world of the white house and the capitol building, but it is a thriving city filled with neighborhoods and history and people and Pelecanos brings that all to life in this book. ( )

In D.C., 37 years ago, three white teens/young men drive into a black neighborhood and harass and yell the N word at a group of black teenagers/young men from their car. The end result is that one of the whites is shot to death and another ends up with a damaged eye, leaving a permanent droopiness and scar. The other white ran away without injury. Two of the blacks went to jail; one ended up serving 20 years because of an added sentence from inside; the other served a year because he made a deal; the third, younger brother to the one who served 20, did not get convicted.
Now, the two surviving whites are about to be extorted by the black guy who served the year; he is still an active criminal involved in pot sales with two young men. The brother who got off happens upon one of the white guys just before this happens and approaches him to try to reach some sort of understanding. ( )