Eastside

Book excerpt: Eastside is a coming-of-age tale set among the backdrop of inner-city gang violence in the early '90s. Eastside is about mothers struggling and supporting one another as they match in a seemingly endless procession to the cemetery to bury their children. After his brother’s death, Travon “Tre” Robinson tries keep his brother’s dying wish to stay straight and narrow as he struggles to distance his life from deeper entanglement with the Wheatley Courts Gangstas. Unrepentantly crooked police officers, violent gangland shoot-outs, blazing car chases, petty drug dealing, ruthless armed robberies, a psychotic seventeen-year-old albino gang member, and the haunting legacy of a long dead brother, complete the complex panoply that is Eastside.