The Holly

Five Bullets, One Gun, and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood

By: Julian Rubinstein

Narrated by: Julian Rubinstein, Larry Herron

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Winner of the 2022 Colorado Book Award for General Nonfiction
Winner of the 2022 High Plains Book Award for Creative Nonfiction

Now the basis for an investigative documentary of the same name, award-winning journalist Julian Rubinstein's The Holly presents a dramatic account of a shooting that shook a community to its core, with important implications for the future.

On the last Friday evening of the summer of 2013, five shots rang out in the parking lot of a new Boys & Girls Club in a part of northeast Denver known as the Holly. Long a destination for African American families fleeing the Jim Crow South, the Holly had become an “invisible city” within a historically white metropolis. While shootings weren’t uncommon, the identity of the shooter that night came as a shock. Terrance Roberts was a revered activist. His attempts to bring peace to his community had won the accolades of both his neighbors and the state’s most important power brokers. Why had he just fired a gun?

In The Holly, the award-winning journalist Julian Rubinstein, who grew up in Denver, reconstructs the events leading up to the fateful confrontation that left a local gang member paralyzed and Terrance Roberts on trial, facing a life in prison. Much more than the story of a shooting, The Holly is a multigenerational crime story that explores the porous boundaries between a city’s elites and its most disadvantaged citizens, as well as the fraught interactions of police, confidential informants, activists, gang members, and ex-gang members trying—or not—to put their pasts behind them. It shows how well-intentioned urban renewal may hasten gentrification, and what happens when overzealous policing collides with gang members who conceive of themselves as defenders, however imperfect, of a neighborhood.

In the era of Black Lives Matter and urgent debates about the future of policing, Rubinstein offers a nuanced and humane illumination of what’s at stake.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Vital chronicle of Denver history

A crucial resource for anyone who wants to understand Denver history and the struggles of anti-gang & anti-police organizing.

exceptional!

this book uncovers police corruption in Denver and the struggle for people of color. i highly recommend!

Must read

Excellent book about an important topic. Terrance Roberts is quite an interesting person. An inside look at how the gangs and police worked together to the detriment of the people. Shocking and should be a requirement for all the mayoral candidates. So many unnecessary deaths. Well written and fascinating. Hard to put down. Happening right under our noses.

Illuminating!

Excellent! This book delivers the history and big and small picture of gang violence and police. A must read.

Learn something new everyday

This story was worth the read for anyone who is coming to or lives in Denver, little did I know such things had occurred here, though not a native, but thankful to the person who shared this story line with me. The troubles, the injustice that has occurred in Denver, and by some of the politicians some whom I have met in person- SHAME ON YOU!