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From Publishers Weekly The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by Kotlowitz, a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and seven, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur.

Convinced that her husband Norm is being unfaithful, Ann Demski has an affair with family friend Nick. When she realizes that Nick contrived the evidence of Norm's unfaithfulness in order to seduce her, she breaks off the affair. Nick then launches an unrelenting campaign to destroy Ann's life.