Boombox

One block. Four neighbors. One very loud problem. Black and white, young and old, men and women, they live in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill, sharing a courtyard in relative harmony. It's what a former mayor liked to call "the urban mosaic." There's Carol Fasone, a secretary enjoying her new marriage to a Bosnian immigrant. There's Mitchell Brett, a Wall Streeter transplanted from Manhattan's Upper East Side, trying to get his wife pregnant. There's Grace Howard, hoping for a promotion in her corporate job, surprised to find herself beginning a romance with a member of the Board. And then there's teenage Jamel Wilson, who buys a big sound system to impress his friends from the projects around the corner, blasts gangster rap into the backyard gardens, and--over the course of one hot summer--pushes the block's friendships and alliances past the breaking point. In Boombox, the author of the Edgar Award-nominated mystery novel Red Hook turns to a different kind of story: a finely-observed urban drama, and a heartfelt, unflinching answer to Rodney King's plaintive question: "Can we all get along?"


Genre: Literary Fiction