South Side Dreams

Meet the Evens family: three generations living together in a desolate neighborhood in Chicago’s crime-ridden Southside.

Life has not turned out the way Dorothy Evens, the head of the clan, dreamed it would. Now she returns home from a dead-end job every night and seeks comfort in a bottle of vodka to numb the pain. Her children find other ways to deal with life in the hood. Danny is on a paper chase, trying to make money and stay alive in spite of threats from a rival dealer. Regina keeps herself busy juggling her children’s fathers, all the while dreaming that someday she will find a man to take her away from the hood. Her twin brother, Reginald, seeks fellowship in the church, but his holier-than-thou attitude ignites plenty of arguments in the household.

When their cousin Anthony returns home after his sixth stay in prison, he is full of rage. A visit to his son, who’s living with a crack-addicted mother, leaves Anthony determined to find a way to ensure a brighter future for the child. He devises a plan that will pull the Evens family out of the desperate cycle of poverty they’ve been stuck in. What price will he be willing to pay to change the course of this family’s future?

©2005 B. K. Ray (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing and Urban Audiobooks, LLC

Good Read

This was a good read. I grew up on the south side of Chicago and can relate to a lot of what was going on in this book. With the drugs and gangs, the story was spot on.