The other side of Prospect A story of violence, injustice, and the American city

Dawidoff (Collision Low Crossers, 2013) tells the American story of immigration, industry, and inequality through the history of one community, Newhallville, CT. Major, Bobby, and Pete are three Black men linked together through murder. Killed as he sat alone in his car, Pete is a well-known member of the community whose death is both tragic and tragically commonplace. Though innocent, Bobby is charged with the crime. Meanwhile, bright, young Major has great potential but succumbs to the tragedy of the community. Just blocks from prestigious Yale University, Newhallville began as a community for immigrants and later became a safe haven for those fleeing the south. As the local Winchester Repeating Arms factory thrived, so too did Newhallville, until, as in much of America, factories fell and brought the town's downturn with them, crime and poverty filling the space left by jobs and prosperity. Linking the ordinary nightmare of Newhallville to the greater national community, Dawidoff shows how Pete's death, Bobby's innocence, and Major's lost potential all act as symbols for contemporary American society.

Journalist Dawidoff (The Catcher Was a Spy) interweaves social history, true crime, and biography in this sprawling report on the 2006 murder of a grandfather in New Haven, Conn. Dissecting decades of racial and class divisions in his hometown, Dawidoff details how racism and deindustrialization helped transform New Haven's blue-collar Newhallville neighborhood from a stepping-stone to the middle class into a "forgotten community" plagued by gun violence. It was in Newhallville that Pete Fields was killed in August 2006, shot point blank while sitting in his car. Bobby (no last name given), a 16-year-old who hung out on a local drug corner but was not involved in street violence, was brought in for questioning by the police and--after hours of aggressive interrogation without the presence of his parents or an attorney--confessed to the murder. Sentenced to 38 years in prison, his conviction was set aside in 2015, when the chief state's attorney concluded that police had falsified records and ignored evidence pointing to another culprit. Dawidoff stuffs the account with statistics on violent crime, digressions into the Great Migration and the history of New Haven, deep dives into street culture and police interview techniques, and intricate biographical sketches. Though meandering at times, it's a searing portrait of injustice in America. (Oct.)

A 2006 murder in New Haven, Connecticut, provides a framework for a wide-ranging study of the problems of life in cities divided by class and race and of the effects of an inept or corrupt police system. Journalist Dawidoff, who was born in New York City but grew up in New Haven, examines in great detail the murder of Herbert "Pete" Fields Jr., a crime for which 16-year-old Bobby Johnson was falsely accused and convicted. He served nine years of a 38-year prison term before he was exonerated and released. The text--compassionate, thoughtful, and thorough to a fault--is caught somewhat uncomfortably between a sociological study of the causes and results of racial division and a more straightforward narrative of Bobby's conviction, imprisonment, and bumpy reentry into society. The author spent hundreds of hours interviewing hundreds of people, including Bobby, his family members, the lawyer who dedicated years of his life to getting Bobby released from prison, Fields' family members, and other residents of the economically depressed Newhallville neighborhood, which Dawidoff describes as "a fully formed working-class neighborhood without any work." The author's research and dedication to the project are clear, but the book would have benefitted from a stronger editorial hand. Readers anxious to get on with the story may get bogged down in the long account, drawing on Fields' sister's memoir, of his childhood in South Carolina. Certain chapters--e.g., an indictment of Yale for its lack of action in the city--are not thoroughly integrated into the narrative structure. Overall, though, Dawidoff presents a compelling examination of a situation in which police officers eager to put another case in the "solved" column ignored obvious evidence and coerced a teenager into a confession of a crime he didn't commit. Anyone with grand illusions about the American justice system will have lost them by the end. An uneven but rigorously reported, urgent book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.