Featured Work of the Week - Book - The Short & Tragic Life of Robert Peace

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Just the title makes you read the story with a horrible sense of knowing what is going to eventually happen.

And that led to the suspense of it all.

Who is Robert Peace?

No one, really.

Just a black kid from a tough part of Newark, New Jersey.

I won't spoil much, because the book is worth looking for, reading and thinking about.

Yet Peace's Dad gets in trouble and is sent to prison for what amounts to the rest of a sad life.

Peace's Mom works so hard every day so that her son can live a better life.

And Robert Peace worked hard...

...real hard.

Academic honors.

Everyone loved him.

He worked even harder.

And as he achieves there's a sense that he will rise above, but a dread in knowing that his past might come calling to claim him.

(Damn. I should have written the back copy for the book!).

Yet, what happened to me as I read it was that I struggled hard with the nature versus nurture debate.

Was Peace's life doomed from the start because of the sins of his Dad?

Could Peace turn it around and break the generational cycle of poverty, drugs, abuse, misery and blame?

Well.

Read the story.

It'll stay with you a good long time.

Do we need to make the same mistakes that those before us have made?

Is there really a better life to be had for a lot of kids who are growing up now who are being disregarded by the "higher" tiers of the society that has forever kept them down?

There are a lot of arguments to be had once two people have finished reading about Robert Peace.

In my head, I argued both sides of it.

In the end...

...tragic about sums it all up.

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