This startling look at desperate, drug-addled inner-city lives ranks as one of the grittiest-and best-examinations of underclass America available. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Deeply moving and unflinchingly real, The Corner will forever alter our view of the so-called war on drugs, even as it compels us to look deep into the hearts and minds of all those who live in America's abandoned places. Through the prism of just one desolate crossroads, Simon and Burns offer chilling assessments of why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have done so little for our inner cities. More vividly than any recent book, The Corner captures an America of which many of us are only dimly aware. Amid so much desperation, decency still flickers, poignantly, across the corner's blasted landscape. Ella, a longtime resident, runs the recreation center for the corner's children, shielding them as best she can from what lies outside the playground's chain-link fence. R.C., a troubled teenager, finds refuge from his chaotic life within the basketball court's magic boundaries. Fat Curt, an aging drug tout, remembers the corner as a kinder place, and tries to protect his customers from weak or dangerous product. But it is also, incredibly, a place of fragile hope. It's a place of predators and their prey, of slingers and touts, of stickup boys and shooting gallery nurses, of ambivalent police, helpless users, and innocent bystanders. In telling the story of DeAndre and his broken family, Simon and Burns open up the complex world of the corner and its unforgettable characters.

Can he rise above his parents' addiction, or will he, too, become a casualty of the corner? Smart and streetwise, he is both drawn to and wary of the drug trade that flourishes beyond his rowhouse steps. But when they themselves stumble and then succumb to the corner's temptations, DeAndre's future hangs in the balance. DeAndre's parents, Gary and Fran, were once poised, against all odds, to pull themselves up and out of West Baltimore. At the center of the narrative is fifteen-year-old DeAndre McCullough. Written by David Simon, the award-winning author of Homicide, and Edward Burns, a former police detective, it follows a handful of people who must struggle mightily just to survive-let alone escape-the drug market that fuels their world. This extraordinary book tells the searing true story of one year in the life of an inner-city neighborhood. Here, the full price of the drug culture is being paid-yet, surprisingly, it can also be a place of hope, caring, and love. On this forgotten intersection, the American dream has crumbled to a nightmare. West Baltimore, Fayette and Monroe: the corner.

The corner david simon series